Katie Scanlon-Gehn

This is in response to last weeks NYTimes article Yoga Addicts New Mantra. There have already been some very eloquent and rich postings by Eddie Stern and Jason that I’ve read about the silliness of this article but I’d like to add another perspective.

When I read Schoeneman’s article what I hear is a woman talking about not liking her body.  I hear her judging herself, comparing herself to others (Madonna and Gwyneth)  and then I hear her try to wrap it up in a lesson about “mixing it up” doing a little yoga and also doing stairmaster or whatever.

My experience with yoga is that through developing a very close relationship with my body – I have been able to open up the door of insight into a history of perception patterns, emotional and mental patterns. And that once observed and acknowledged these patterns begin to change and things start to disappear – things like worrying about how I look… start to disappear.

And believe me I worried! I was 5 10in in 6th grade and weighed 145lbs. I had a big butt (I knew that thanks to my dad) and huge feet (size 10 EEE). It was also during this whole fitness craze with Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda, aerobics, dancersize, jazzercise — so I KNEW I was freakishly big and that I should be smaller than I was. I know for sure that by 5th grade I hated my body and would literally cry in bed about it. For a long time I had a note written by my 6 year old sister that said “Dear Katie, I don’t think you are fat, you are beautiful. ” All spelled backwards and in little kid handwriting.

So I started throwing up the food that I ate. I didn’t do the crazy crazy bulemic shit you see on the TV movies – I just rarely ate, when I did I felt good for a minute, then I’d get too full, feel guilty, I’d hate the feeling of being full because I knew I’d eaten too much so I’d throw it up and go on with my day. I became a vegetarian so I couldn’t eat the meals that my family ate and so on.

I’ll spare you too many details, but lets just say that the pattern of hating myself, over-eating and throwing up is something that I struggled with on and off through college and even while I was on the National Team for rowing. I did a little reading on eating disorders and talked to a few people about them and had sort of decided that I would probably always struggle with that feeling of hating my body – being uncomfortable in my own skin. It’s hard to describe – but if you ‘ve had it you know what I mean.

And then I started learning and practicing ashtanga yoga.

In 1998, I raced my last race in rowing and I started looking for yoga. I knew there had to be something like Ashtanga yoga out there for me and I was lucky enough to find it. I wanted to learn the philosophy, I wanted to understand the breathing, the asana’s… mainly I just wanted to practice. So diving in I went.

Years later I barely remember those deep feelings of self hatred I had for my body. Somewhere along the way I stopped judging myself, I stopped comparing my body to the other women around me – and it’s not like yoga women are big – I’m an amazon in this yoga world!  But it feels like the yoga, even in those early years when I knew almost nothing about it, was healing for me! I didn’t have to be practicing any kind of advanced series, I didn’t go to India, nothing… practicing with the intention of … just practicing, was enough.

Now… a few of the comments that I’ve read to Jason’s commentary on the article put down the notion that the road to spiritual enlightenment or (whatever you want to call it) has anything to do with the physical. To those people and also to  Schoeneman I say that sadly you’ve missed the boat – you can’t live fully in this life without having a close relationship with your body – as it is in this moment – it’s a neuromuscular certainty.

And for those of us with body image issues past or present – maybe once we get to live fully in this body of ours (through yoga or any other intentional physical activity)  we’ll experience it’s beauty – and with time we’ll be healed, and so will our sons and daughters and grandchildren too.

Thanks for reading – I’d love to hear your thoughts or feelings about this.

Love, Katie

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