the body's a pesky, unwanted thing

I'm sitting here, wondering what's so awful about yoga that no one wants to do it. My Sunday morning class just got cancelled. It was lucky for me, since I broke my toe Thursday, but couldn't really afford to cancel, so was gonna somehow wing it.

Still, the frustration is there. I started thinking about "why won't people come", and while it's tempting to assume (and I generally do) you attract desired outcomes sometimes, I do think it's a bigger issue than that. Everyone I know in the industry struggles with low attendance. Even people I consider to be ten times as good as I am and who've been teaching for years.

Is it poor marketing skills? Because admittedly, no one knows how to market this damn thing.
Is it high prices? Be easy to claim, but the most expensive studios I teach at are as empty as the cheapest.
Is it slow-coming results?

There, I think we're starting to hit the nail on the head. Teaching consistently for almost a year now, I often see that - a seething frustration with yoga's lack of results. And by that, I mean strictly physical results. If it don't get me that bikini body, then what's the point? So people meander into the class occasionally, but then fuck off back to the heavier, more result-yielding workouts. Of course, it doesn't help that we often label and present yoga as belonging solely to the physical space, thus cheapening it.

We're afraid of the more gnarly spiritual, cultish connotations. We don't want to seem like too much. Except nothing good ever came of making yourself less to fit external palates.

And of course, there's a huge physical component to it, as well, and I realize we regard our bodies as troublesome pests. Many people run on a mentality of "I only have 45 minutes for my body today, so I want maximum results". I get that. Time is a premium. Or at least, feels like a premium. A commodity we're perpetually running out of.

And yet, in a world where we're forever automating and streamlining our days, I can't help but wonder if perhaps we've got it all wrong, if it never seems to be enough. We get people to clean, we get AI to solve issues we can't be bothered for so we're more efficient at work, we get someone else to do the shopping for us, we move as many of our physical tasks into the online...all just so that we can have more time. But we are, still, always somehow running out.

Maybe it's our approach that's lacking, and not the time itself.

Though we live, in ways, in a supremely privileged position where, indeed, we've shirked many non-negotiable tasks of previous centuries, we keep falling short. We've somehow decided we only have a very small sliver of time to dedicate to the body, and the little we have goes mostly to appearance, in a way. We all like to think of ourselves as viable candidates on the sexual market, so it's logical that we'll do what we can to "improve our chances". Even when that's not a priority, we focus on building muscle, convinced that that will be enough to keep us fit and well into our old age.

We don't realize we're running into old age ill at ease in our own bodies.

Strange. If this were a friend that you never made time for, you wouldn't be at all surprised when they eventually told you to fuck off. And yet, treating our own bodies the same, we expect to somehow enjoy a tranquil and joyful old age?

I realize I'm in a different place. I don't really see yoga as purely physical, and I see time and again the perils of treating my body as a pesky, unwanted thing. I realize the more I try to impose mind over matter, the more I suffer.

Years ago, I wrote here of running so fast and so recklessly through my early 20s that it eventually culminated into a very real, very painful fall and injury. Now again, I was well-aware my body wanted to sit at home and chill, but my mind kept insisting on this scarcity of time - on needing to be out and about, getting shit done. Subconscious conscious, eh? Be damn foolish to treat these as isolated physical events.

But we run our lives like that, treating our bodies as one more chore to somehow ensure desirability, a good old age, the very vague "health" that seems to exist outside of us entirely. We make of ourselves a project, but rarely come to the mat with the express desire of sitting with ourselves.

Not lunging, not standing on our heads. Sitting.

People in this modern age of constant chatter seem to have an aversion to stillness (something I'm guilty of myself, admittedly). I see people reject things that require stillness of them, and feel cheated at "wasting" 15 of their 60 minutes being still, meditating, integrating. What a waste, when they could've integrated another rep in that time, and gotten a better score on their body chart, yeah?

Why don't people come when you want them? Seems a question for my yoga, but also for Hive. And I can't help thinking of that old tried-and-true lesson not to chase, and cheapen your own worth. I find it hard to understand our onboarding struggles, when in private, I'm very much a "you don't like it? then fuck off" kinda girl. It's hard-earned, a little salty, but serves me far better than chasing ever did. Perhaps I've yet to learn that lesson in regards to yoga. And perhaps it's one we could use here as well.

What is it in the still and the dark that fills us with such terror, I wonder?