Oh the lessons I've learned . . . Yoga as a Vessel for Personal Growth

In true American fashion, I have spent most of the nearly 3.5 decades of my life thus far in a hurry. Even as a kid going to horse shows, it’s all “hurry up and wait.” As a student, I rushed between school and work and activities and my social life. As an adult, I find myself rushing to meet deadlines, sometimes staring at a computer screen for so many hours for so many consecutive days that I awake with eye strain. American culture is all about linear trajectories to “success,” it’s all about overachieving and multitasking and, ultimately, it’s all about ego. And despite my background in anthropology (Read: Shouldn’t I be able to identify these characteristics as cultural? I trained for this!), I am no less prone to the influence of my birth culture than anybody else. I have been lucky, however, as yoga has taught me about presence, about the moment, and about sitting still and quiet and without judgment for long enough that I am finally, at 34, beginning to accept and enjoy myself.

Yoga has come in and out of my life since I first stepped onto a mat at 18. I was drawn to it for the physical challenge but soon discovered that, as wonderful as backbends and hip openers and inversions may feel physically, it was what they’ve brought to the heart and mind of my life that are the most valuable to me.

While I have been practicing yoga with varying consistency for 16 years, there are three distinct periods in my life when I sought the practice out, and each of these times has taught me a distinct (though connected) lesson about the benefits of being still yet present, about being in the moment: to sit with emotion/pain; to quiet the mind; and, most recently, to accept myself, without ego and without judgment. 

Sitting with emotion/pain

When I was 15 years old, my first horse, Clancy, broke his leg and we had to “put him down.” Clancy had been my best friend for the past four years, since coming to me skinny and frightened, and we had grown up together. But there was nothing I could do when he broke his leg. I wasn’t even there when it happened. 

I responded to Clancy’s death in a quintessentially American way. I evaded the many emotions - sadness, grief, guilt - that accompanied my loss and threw myself into horses, competitions, and teenage experimentation. Between my overachiever personality and my inability (or unwillingness) to feel the pain that accompanied this loss, I was quickly drawn to methamphetamine. In addition to increasing my confidence, meth allowed me to bury my pain while continuing to present an illusion of success. During the subsequent years, I slept little and hid well, disguising almost daily drug use with all kinds of traditional achievements - I maintained good grades, competed at nationals in my equestrian division, worked part-time, got into college. Outside of those first days after Clancy’s untimely death - when the pain was still overwhelming, gut-wrenching - I managed to avoid feeling the loss.

That is, until my very first yoga class. I was 18 years old and living away from home for the first time, attending the University of California Los Angeles. I had traded methamphetamine for more readily available coping mechanisms and had begun to truly loathe myself. Yoga was offered as an elective two nights each week for the duration of the ten week quarter, so I signed up, expecting to gain flexibility and possibly some “cool” points. What I found was much more. Yoga helped me revisit a pain that I had been avoiding for 3 years. What’s more, yoga taught me to acknowledge it, to feel it, and to let it go. For me, this did not mean letting go of Clancy, or forgetting our time together, or minimizing the loss, but it did mean leaving the destructive baggage behind so I could begin to ease my way into the present. To this day, I don’t completely understand the mechanisms of this lesson, but I think it was the relative quiet of the class, the remarkable stillness of Savasana. 

The class was held on a raised deck, open to the air, and, being Los Angeles, the evenings were warm. That first night changed my life. I was surprised at the physical challenge of the practice itself. But I was stirred by what happened at the end. As the instructor guided us into Savasana, I first discovered the challenge of true relaxation. In fact, I came nowhere near it. Instead, my body weary, my heart strained, I fell into a lucid dreamlike state during which I finally said goodbye and mourned in truth for the first time over the horse that I had lost, the one that had been my best friend, the one that I had saved, and the one that I had somehow totally let down. With no images, no words, no music to distract my mind from the guilt and sadness that I had carried with me for three years, I was forced to sit with it, and the grief shook my slack body. That night, I learned my first lesson from yoga - I learned that it is ok to feel, and that until we truly acknowledge our emotion and let it move through our bodies, it will be impossible to forgive or to grow.

Quieting the mind

In the years immediately following that first encounter, I practiced yoga sporadically, but struggled to find another transformative moment. In fact, caught up in the rush of life and the exhilaration of becoming an adult, when I did attend class, I would catch myself clenching my jaw and grinding my teeth throughout the practice. Racing through postures in flow and power classes, I simply could not quiet my mind enough to experience yoga as anything other than a workout. And I didn’t just practice yoga this way; I was living this way, moving from job to job, from town town, from person to person.

That is, until I discovered the joy of a different kind of practice in a distinctly different place. At 23 years old, I was preparing to embark on an adventure of a lifetime. For others, I framed it as an academic excursion, a very pragmatic pre-grad-school-application test of my mettle. I was going to go to Morocco to study Arabic and to explore the possibilities of conducting graduate research there. After the fast-paced atmospheres of Los Angeles and New York City, after the bitter cold of manual labor in central Virginia’s harshest winter in a decade, the desert heat and open space were wildly appealing. I left for Morocco armed with a set of yoga asana cards and a mat and for three months I learned Arabic, spoke French, ate with my hands, and came to appreciate the value of a common Moroccan saying, “Un homme pressé est déjà mort”/“A man in a hurry is already dead.” During my time in Morocco, I practiced yoga nearly every day and rather than rushing through poses or working toward a sweat, I discovered a practice that was about what felt good each day, that was about being on rooftops overlooking strange cities, that was about opening up my heart to a world that I was learning to truly experience and be present in. 

When I returned to the US, yoga remained a regular part of my life and it was during this time that I first began to quiet my mind. Under the tutelage of Anusara-trained Jordan Kirk, my practice began to deepen. Through holding poses and finding the details of mental as well as physical alignment, I began to learn to quiet my mind for long enough each day to make room for the type of joy that radiates from within. While flow classes had enabled me to anticipate what would come next, feeding into my overanxious brain, Anusara taught me not only to wait, but to delve into the present with the same enthusiasm I usually brought to “what next?” I think the first time I felt this type of “present” was in Camatkarasana (wild thing), a truly invigorating and freeing pose that always encourages me to surrender to the moment. 

I still struggle with this lesson of quieting the mind, and often find myself looking to my husband and our dog as a reminder of its benefits. Both seem impossibly comfortable with “just being” in a way that I work for every day. But once I felt it for that first time, I now find this type of presence comes quickly during any yoga practice and every now and again, I catch glimpses of it in my daily life. After all, every day is practice. And while learning to slow down, quiet my mind, and appreciate the moment has not changed my craving for movement, it has changed the way I experience the journey.

The author reveling in history and adventure,
Egypt, circa 2005

Accepting myself

The importance of accepting myself, without ego and without judgment, is the most recent lesson that yoga has brought to my life. After an eight-year hiatus from routine practice, I recently returned to the mat, and my body and spirit have been grateful. This latest lesson is an important one, and in a highly competitive world, one that was sorely needed. Ego and self-judgment have become considerable barriers in recent years, blocking my ability to experience true joy, even in the best of times, even in activities that are supposed to be fun. 

When I went to that first yoga class 16 years ago, I had no ego, no expectations, about my own abilities. But a month ago, when I laid my mat on the hardwood floor of a yoga studio for the first time in years, I felt my stomach flip. Nerves. Would I be able to live up to my past performance capacity? It had been so long since I last engaged in a routine yoga practice, and my hamstrings had become so tight, my back tender from injury, my mind filled with the stresses of a competitive and demanding career and, at 34 years old - despite a valiant effort to remain active through horse-back riding and rock climbing - my body had already begun to reflect, and to manifest, these stresses.

Self-conscious and worried that I would both let myself down and look a fool attempting the very asanas that had once been so familiar and freeing, I beelined for a relatively isolated corner of the studio. As I took a seat beside the mirror, the self-judgement began immediately. I critiqued my reflection for its hunched shoulders and struggled to sit up straight. I ground my teeth in frustration with my own weaknesses and with the nascent fear that yoga, a practice that had helped me through hard times in the past, was now daunting, even more so than the first time I ever attempted it. 

Serendipitously, the instructor’s lesson that day, what she wanted each of us to take away, was about judgment. “Do not judge yourself, do not compare yourself to others - in your practice or in your life. Let go of society’s expectations about what is the ‘good’ or ‘right’ or ‘successful’ path for you. Let it go, and accept yourself in your heart.” They were the perfect words at the perfect time. The reminded me of the Sufi proverb, “No fear, no expectations,” that I had always found inspiring. My ego had grown too powerful, and I was becoming paralyzed with fear.

In the midst of a major life change, I had thought that returning to a regular yoga practice would help me make an important decision. Suddenly, however, I realized that yoga was not here to help me work through the decision, as I had expected, but to teach me to come to terms with my choice, whatever it would be. Whether I elected to stay on the same path or take that frightening leap into the unknown, I would need to overcome expectations - my own as well as those of others. And to do this, I realized, I would first have to learn to sit with myself, my true self, without judgment. And when the teacher began to speak and I took that first focused breath toward an awesome new intention, a tear rolled down my cheek. 

As I have renewed my practice, and come to re-learn my body and its changes without judgment, without expectation, I have found greater joy in every activity. I can appreciate that I am stronger than I used to be, but that I am also tighter, and I am ok with this, because there is no greater value in one or the other. These physical qualities are simply the result of life - the result of rock climbing regularly, the result of hours sitting at a desk - and they will benefit from being balanced but they neither increase nor decrease the value of me.

Throughout my life, like many smart, motivated women, I have tied my self-worth up in what I can do, bound my identity to a career or an accomplishment. Once again, yoga has jolted me, offering perspective and a powerful reminder that self-judgment, ego, is not a motivator but a barrier to growth. Ego is what would keep me from embracing the joy of Setu Bandha Sarvangasana (bridge pose) simply because Urdhva Dhanurasana (wheel), once so accessible, is once again a challenge. Ego is what would prevent me from attempting standing splits class after class even though my lines may never be as stunning as those of the former dancers. Ego would not allow me to submit this essay or share these experiences for fear that they are not profound enough to be worthwhile.

*****

As an American, I have often been witness to, and sometimes experienced, that desire for a fast-paced, fitness-oriented yoga practice. Vinyasa flow and power yoga classes interspersed with asana-inspired crunches and held to thumping beats are no longer difficult to find. In fact, they tend to be far more common and crowded than the quieter, stiller (though no less challenging) Inyegar, Anusara, and Kripalu inspired classes that have taught me so much. And I by no means want to downplay the physiological benefits of yoga. Routine practice relieves years of spinal compression that comes from hunching over a computer and reminds me to stay in tune with, and listen to, my body. Yoga keeps me strong in the depths of my muscles and complements other sports I enjoy. The physical benefits of yoga practice are not and should not be ignored. 

But, for me, the physical benefits are simply a welcome bonus. Over the years, yoga has come into my life at opportune times and I have sought it out during times of mental and emotional turmoil. Again and again, I have found that, through the physical practice of asanas, I have explored lessons that went well beyond the physical, that taught me to integrate the physical with the mental. For me the concept of stillness, has been the most significant overarching lesson. Achieved through both the movement through poses and the deep holding of them, this learning to be present has translated into an ability to sit with my emotion, with my mind, and, eventually, I hope, with myself. As with my ability to focus in order to hold an arm balance or suspend my fear to permit inversion, as I become better at remaining present without judgment on the mat, the next challenge will be translating these lessons into my everyday living.

Gender & power, or why I sometimes wish I were a 200+ lb man

The other night, after watching my remarkably powerful partner repeatedly launch his bowling ball through the air so it landed with a concentration shattering thud a third of the way down the lane (he was not messing around; this is just how he bowls), I turned ruefully to my friend, "Sometimes, I just wish I could spend a day in his body. I want to know what it feels like to have the kind of brute strength to break things by accident."

I am a reasonably strong woman. I grew up riding horses, which is code for mucking stalls, carrying water buckets, and throwing bales of hay. I practice yoga and I rock climb. Since I started climbing, I don't regularly lift weights, but I'm no stranger to them. I am reasonably strong. But when I want to move something that weighs, say, as much as I do, I have to work pretty damn hard at it. I cannot always open my own jars. I have never thought I was pulling on something with a normal force only to have it fall apart in my hand. I am reasonably strong, but I am not especially powerful, not physically anyway.

I think this sense of natural power is something many men (and some women) come to take for granted, this trust in one's own physical prowess, not in a pound for pound kind of way, but in an absolute kind of way. I'm pretty sure that if he needed to, my husband could just pick up a car. He's pulled me, two other women, and several men, all linked together in boats and inner tubes, through what seemed like miles of river too shallow to raft, too cold for most of us to walk through. He is, by my definition, powerful. And this degree of power seems to be accompanied by certainty, by trust in one's own ability to act.

I covet this type of power on a regular basis. I just want to know what it feels like. But today I wanted it with a different type of desperation, the kind that stems from fear and insecurity and vulnerability. I wanted to feel that kind of power from the inside, with all the certainty and self-confidence that come with it. I wanted this from the kind of desperate and terrified positionality that I wonder if big powerful (men) can ever completely understand.

My friend J and I were walking the dogs this afternoon when, seemingly out of nowhere, a little spaniel charged us. Having encountered this trouble-maker dog previously when it broke away from its owner and charged my dog, snarling and clawing at her face, I braced myself and positioned my body between my neurotic and unforgetting border collie mix and the charging spaniel. The dog was surprisingly polite to our little group and all seemed fine as we turned to try and return it to its owners just a house away.

But Bagel (my dog) seemed to know something wasn't right (or she was still traumatized by the spaniel) because she pulled her epic slip-the-collar-and-roll-over-in-the-middle-of-the-street-tail-wagging-and-all routine. By the time I processed her fear, I turned to see a huge bloodhound type dog heading straight for us. He went directly for J's dog, the smallest and most submissive of the three, and seemed to be trying to bite her over and over again around her face and her throat. I don't know if he is usually an aggressive dog or if he mistook Lola and her screams for prey, or if he thought he needed to protect the little spaniel, and I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but at the time he was a monster and we didn't know what to do about it.

He broke Lola's skin, ripping her ear open, before J managed to wedge herself between them, draping her own body over her little terrier's in an absolute display of reactive altruism. We shouted at the dog to stop. We tried to create barriers and move it away with our own bodies. I wanted to do what I had read is a safe-ish way to break up a dog fight and lift the dog's hind end like a wheelbarrow, but feared he would turn on me or on one of the two dogs in my charge. I wanted to kick the dog, to hurt him just enough to scare him off, but my empathy coupled with my fear paralyzed me and I stuck to more passive measures. My size and pound for pound a hell of a lot fiercer, this was a dog neither J nor I could fathom managing if he turned his aggression on us.

The hound's owner, a large man in his early 30s, showed up just as J got Lola out of harm's way and the big dog turned his attention to the wily former reservation mutt I was dog-sitting. She seemed unfazed, but I was relieved when the owner removed his dog from the situation and it became clear that my gumption wouldn't be tested.

Walking away, I don't know if I have ever felt so helpless. J and I talked about it, both wishing we had been more aggressive, more pro-active in actually forcing the dog to retreat. I don't know what I would have done had the dog attacked Bagel instead of little Lola. I imagine I would have done just as I have done every other time I've worried my dog was threatened; I would have done as J did and used my body as a shield. I am confident I would be able to protect my dog, even if it meant risking myself, but I would probably not have had the power (physical or emotional or psychological) to remove the threat from the situation.

What bothers me about this is that my response would never be as certain as my husband's when I told him about it. His is a certainty that comes with having a degree of physical power that renders one, not invincible, but certainly less vulnerable. This certainty is something that cannot be learned late in life. It is something that comes with always having strength beyond what you "should," beyond what is "normal," and the weight to throw behind it. But, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it is more than that. I wonder if perhaps it isn't just about having profound physical power, but also about living in a world that focuses on and reinforces and perpetuates your power on multiple levels. That is, I think maybe it's also about gender.

While I cannot speak for all women, it's fair to argue that part of why the particular type of vulnerability  J and I experienced during that dog encounter is especially frightening for and disproportionately experienced by, women, is because we are constantly reminded of our own vulnerability. It is coupled with and exacerbated by structural vulnerability relating not only to gendered disparities in size and strength but to disparate distributions of material and social power over time such that it is imprinted. It is reinforced every time I read an article about women being attacked by men, every time I hear an argument for or against women's rights to healthcare, to child care, to maternity leave, to dress a certain way, etc. It is highlighted when I seek to be empathic and understand the suffering of my fellow women, fellow humans, fellow creatures. In fact, psychologists and sociologists have begun to show that part of women's distinct ways of constructing "risk" - across all kinds of domains (from sports to finances) - compared to men may be attributable not only to gendered differences in upbringing around communication and values and life role expectations, but because of our disproportionate likelihood of becoming a victim of sexual assault, an act that culturally and psychologically compounds multiple forms of vulnerability (see, for example, Gustafson 1998).

So, as much as I still admit to envying the type of physical power that would have allowed me to intervene and protect myself, J, and our group of dogs in a more proactive way, even if I could physically have moved that hound dog, I have learned, I have been taught all of my life, to be aware always of my own vulnerability. And something tells me brute strength wouldn't be enough to overcome that type of uncertainty.

When life is edgework...maybe too many edges?

Lately, in the hopes of expanding my research identity beyond "the girl who studies meth use," I've been learning a lot about edgework theory and constructions of risk, especially in sport, and I can't help but think about how it applies to my own life. A very simplistic explanation of edgework theory is that it situates voluntary risk taking within the structures of the capitalist economy, conceptualizing it as embodiment of, escape from, or resistance to one's position in it. Lyng's edgework, at its core, is about the skillful navigation of the wiggly and fuzzy boundary that ostensibly separates chaos from control. According to Lyng and other edgework theorists, this navigation of risk (physical, emotional, and psychological) arises as a means of achieving fulfillment. In this sense, many behaviors can be conceptualized as edgework, from so-called lifestyle or extreme sports (skydiving, mountaineering, and rock climbing for example) to high stakes careers, from the pro-ana subculture to participation in S&M. The argument goes that people seek out voluntary risk taking to find the fulfillment that is otherwise lacking in our current political-economic structure. In some forms of edgework, they resist this structure; in others (most of those that have been the center of researchers' attention) they embody it.

While I've never thought of myself as a risk taker or an edgeworker, if I use the above definition, I really always have been. I've spent the vast majority of my life riding horses, an activity that is often treated as a non-sport and low-risk although its risk and injury profile closely resembles motorcycle riding - when we do get hurt, it's often bad, and statistics put it up there as one of the more "dangerous" sports there is. Even as a kid, I rarely rode the quiet horses; most of my mounts were young with little training and/or came off the racetrack at some point. I jumped big jumps and competed in high-pressure situations, and for the most part, I loved it. I thrived on the thrill and, more importantly, on the challenge of walking that edge, of having to control my own nerves, of pushing myself to perform even when frightened or overwhelmed.

As an adult, I continued riding, though mostly this meant catching whatever free rides I could find - read: rescues, horses straight off the auction block, horses about whom little was known. I also spent much of my young adult life looking for something fulfilling and relished in the insecurity of traveling often and moving perhaps more often. In my 20s I met my now-husband who happens to be a rock climber and, despite my fear of heights, I learned to climb. In 2012, I completed a PhD and embarked upon what I hoped would be a fulfilling and exciting "soft money" career. At the time, I had a tough and athletic mare straight off the track. She was challenging emotionally and physically and, for someone like me (not the most assertive out there), she was borderline dangerous. But throughout the final years of my PhD, when I was adjuncting at least 2 classes a semester, commuting many hours each week, and writing writing writing, she filled a void and challenged me in important ways. I even thanked her in my dissertation. During this same time, I really started to push myself at lead climbing, and finally began learning to effectively manage my fear of heights and of falling. I was truly navigating multiple edges, and I was loving it!

Then something happened. I got scared. Really scared. I was scared of my tough horse and now, sometimes, I'm still scared of my much kinder horse. For a while I've been blaming my age, blaming an injury, blaming my schedule. But I can't quite buy it. I fluctuate too much. My confidence returns only to be shot down instantly. And I noticed the other day that when things look good at work, fear wanes in other areas.

That said...edgework theory has given me a new lens that I think is worth exploring. I graduated. I started working on a small NIH grant. My research was still exciting and comfortable, but about a year in, I began to feel the insecurity of soft money. My grant was going to run out and I hadn't yet found more funding. Suddenly, the edges that had been fulfilling were nothing but stressful. Suddenly, it was as though work had become edgework, too, as I sought to strategize ways to secure funding, as I sought to learn as many new subfields and bodies of literature as possible to cast a wide net of proposals, and as I struggled with the fear and insecurity that accompanies the constant threat of losing not only one's income, but one's identity. As the rejections continued, and the (unpaid) work hours lengthened, my job began to feel like the "high stakes" careers edgework researchers always talk about. I am constantly on multiple deadlines, deadlines that if I miss cost me a potential salary. And it's all wrapped up in my identity, or my identity is wrapped up in it. After all, I don't just do social science or anthropological research. I am an anthropologist. What happens if my funding just ends, what happens if I'm not anymore?

As the nature of my work shifted, so did my relationship to my favorite athletic endeavors. Suddenly, the horse's every threat became the potential for death and I couldn't manage my own fear any longer. Suddenly, I lost the progress I'd made lead climbing, and the prospect of even a tiny fall at the gym also became unmanageable. In recreation, I no longer see a boundary between chaos and control, or a way to manage fear. And this has a snowball effect. The more confidence I lose, the more challenging it is, and the less rewarding, to grapple with edges. In the past year, I've come to really want my recreation to feel safe...could it be because, right now, my job doesn't?

So, armed with this theory of edgework, I've begun to ask myself: is it possible to have "too many edges"? I'm so curious to know whether people's relation to edgework activities shifts such that they can only handle a few at a time, or if it only works if it feels truly voluntary, or if we all need varying amounts of it. Is voluntary risk-taking more appealing when most aspects of life are safe and secure?

Why we need to quit gendering "success"

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the climbing gym for a quick session. I was working my way up a route near the max of my ability, and exhausted about 3/4 of the way up, half falling, half simply sitting in my harness. Fortunately, I was on top-rope so fell only so far as the rope stretched, as when I looked down in the direction of my belayer, I saw another climber not 10 feet below me, lead climbing on a different route that overlapped with mine and ended on the same anchors. This behavior is a major violation of climbing etiquette - it is dangerous and it is obtrusive - and for a rather nervous climber like myself, it has the especially anxiety-inducing consequence of making me feel that I need to rush through a "project," perhaps forgoing additional attempts at moves I find challenging. I jumped back on the route, climbed until I fell again one move from the top, and when I saw that the man was still climbing just behind me, I asked to be lowered. My partner and I exchanged exasperated looks with neighboring climbers, but didn't say anything to the offending pair. We waited for them to apologize. They never did, and in fact they engaged in a number of other rude violations of climbing etiquette while there, including leaving a lead rope unattended on a route after they finished climbing it. This occupied the route so that, although they were no longer climbing it, others could not.

Perhaps because I had just returned from the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting where I elected to prioritize feminist panels over those that were drug related, I was really angered by this encounter. Contrary to popular advice or wisdom or whatever, however, I was not angered at my own silence. Rather, I was bothered by the two men's oblivion, by their unwillingness to just look about and consider how their actions were affecting the people around them.

The thing is, there have been countless lists floating around the internet lately that highlight the traits of "successful" people and telling women how they need to change in order to be more "successful" themselves. [I've put the term successful in quotes here as it is a problematic concept in and of itself and these articles consistently refer to very cultured and arguably gendered notions of success - financial, material, work-related, etc.] There is even a recent blog post I came across that urges women in academia to practice engaging in assertive or confident, rather than submissive, body language and to learn to take up (demand) more space for themselves.

In many societies, including the US, dominance is associated with masculinity while the act of submission and traits/behaviors associated with submissiveness are viewed as feminine. This gendering of (preferred vs. undesirable) behaviors manifests at multiple levels of society and reifies the relative status of men and women. It shapes gender, contributing to a strictly binary vision of the construct. Thus, how men and women are taught to act and interact from a young age and specific character traits in turn correspond with the hierarchical categorization of gender across society.

Now, as a relatively submissive person (by nature and probably also via my upbringing and culture), I am certainly grateful for the lessons that have taught me to be more assertive, to be more straightforward and open about my needs and desires. My concern with all this discourse encouraging women to adopt traits associated with normative masculinity and abandon those associated with normative femininity comes when I envision a world in which everybody is demanding that the soft-spoke person across the table speak louder. What I don't understand is why the conversation seems to exclude a request that the soft-spoken person's table-mate listen harder. Why don't we, as a society, ask the person who is taking up more than his/her "share" of space to look around and consider whether and how this is affecting others? Why does it seem that the pressure to change is primarily placed upon those who strive to be less demanding to become more so? Why can't thinking of how one's actions affect others be seen as confident and competent? (Arguably, this is where the reification of the gender/submission association has its greatest impact.)

It makes me think of this interview I heard last summer with Daniel Suelo, who has spent the last nearly 15 years living "without money." While he does depend upon generosity and publicly funded resources for many things, he has managed to survive and thrive for all these years without himself directly engaging the cash economy. And he has apparently been largely criticized for it, with a major and common critique being that what he's doing isn't sustainable for the whole society. In the interview, he noted that odds are, in a society as large as our current one, this is true. His way of life is largely dependent upon those who do participate in the cash economy. But he turns this question back on his critics and wonders why these same people fail to recognize that, at the end of the day, the excessive consumerism valorized in American culture is far less sustainable on a global scale.

Ultimately, we need to consider what type of society we want to live in. Is it one in which every person fights for the limited space on the couch or is it one in which every person makes him or herself so small as to take up less than a cushion? It's probably neither. We need people who are acting in the best interest of themselves and in the best interest of others. We need people capable of balancing being relational with assertive about their own ideas. I'm not proposing an end to the call for submissive women (and men) to step up and make their voices heard, to take up their share of space, or to confidently share their ideas. Rather, I'm arguing that we need an equal call for those who are more dominant in nature to look around before taking up so much space, to try listening harder before asking a companion to speak up, and to consider the good of the group in addition to any benefit to themselves. To truly (re)value these various traits in a more equitable manner we will have to de-gender the traits themselves or acknowledge and rectify persistent gender inequalities. Looks like it's back to feminism 101.

My heart will go out . . .

When public tragedy strikes, it understandably sets people on edge, highlighting the vulnerability of safe places and insulated populations. Events like the Newtown massacre and today's bombings at the Boston marathon set my Facebook page twittering with heartfelt outreach, with the sending of thoughts and prayers, and with people fearfully finding themselves able to relate to the circumstances and the victims. I hate to admit it, but since the Aurora shooting, I am frightened of going into movie theaters, especially for popular, high-profile films. And I feel for those who were affected and continue to be. We have seen too many sad events both in the US and abroad in recent years.

But, each time I am faced with people's anger and philosophical questions that stem from these incidents, I find myself reflecting upon why we, as a society, are not infuriated and heartbroken every single day. Because, the fact of the matter is, we live in a world where the the tragedies are rampant and the inequities are astronomical. As Americans, we live in a country where the wealth gaps are among some of the largest in the world; where we have accepted the fact that some people will die because they cannot find, or afford, safe, appropriate shelter; where some of our cities have some of the highest gun murder rates in the world (America's 10 Deadliest Cities; Gun Violence in US Cities). In Baltimore, in the past 30 days, 22 people were murdered; all of these people were Black; all but three were men. My guess is that most were poor. In Detroit, a city that gets roughly 3,000 fires annually, firefighters seem to disproportionately (compared to other cities) risk their lives entering dilapidated and ostensibly vacant structures in an effort to save the have-nots who have too likely taken refuge within. Yet we do not seem to regard these systemic, structurally-rooted, forms of violence as violence, we do not view them as a call to reproach the system or challenge the culture.

I certainly grieve for the many victims of these highly-publicized incidents; I am sad for those who lost their lives, for those who lost their loved ones, for those who lost their sense of security; but my outrage runs much deeper, and finds its roots at the many daily tragedies we just accept. I am baffled, not by the occasional "crazy" or the periodic sociopath (or group of sociopaths), but by a country that so systematically oppresses entire groups of people, that abandons them and blames them and deems them "undeserving", not only of our tax dollars, but of our tears. I am angry because at the end of the day, it feels like nobody cares enough about those people to question society. We, as a culture, have expanded this "deserving vs undeserving poor" mentality to "deserving vs undeserving" period . . . "innocents" are deserving of our grief, they're the reason for reflection. The poor, the oppressed, we can sweep them under the rug again and again and again. I'd like to think we're just so numb to it now, that it's been too painful, so we can't react to (structural as well as physical) violence on such a scale, with such regularity. But I don't think that's it. I think, at the end of the day, we just don't care as much about those folks.

Many people will make the argument that an awful lot of these people were not "innocent", that they were embedded in systems that create and perpetuate violence. Others may cite moral transgressions or "weaknesses" as justification. But we cannot fool ourselves or construct ourselves as innocent by denying our own complicity in such systems. With very few exceptions, we - even the most oppressed, even the well-meaning, among us - are part of the problem, if for no other reason than we all work harder to get by (to succeed even) within the structure when perhaps we should be dismantling it (thank you to Paulo Freire for this image of the oppressive oppressed).

And this is, of course, where I get bogged down. As an anthropologist, I seek to understand: I ask myself, has my home culture has always been this way, so callously favoring the wealthy? I seek to understand the larger structural systems that have set us all up in opposition to one another, that seem to require some to suffer so others can succeed. I ask whether xenophobia is a cultural or a human phenomenon. But when I try to think just as me, just as a person, not as an academic, I don't know if I care why. I want to know what we are going to do about it. Then, feeling too vulnerable and ineffective, I bring my inner-academic back out and wonder, is it possible to effect meaningful (and desirable) change without answering these other questions? And that I don't know. For now, I know only this, and I will choose to reflect upon it every day, not just when the media decides something awful has happened: My heart will go out to the poor, to the suffering, to the daily murdered or beaten or frightened, to those who find themselves oppressed, exploited and excluded. I will think of them every single day. And maybe one day I will have an answer.

Culture, food, and the edible animal

Anthropologists spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the foods and food-related rituals and meanings of cultures the world over. In Mary Douglas' influential "Abominations of Leviticus", she explored the religion-based categorization of foods as edible and inedible. Marvin Harris' "The Riddle of the Sacred Cow" examines the Hindu prohibition against eating cows from a materialist perspective, arguing the myriad ways cows are more valuable to the society alive than as food. These canonic anthropological texts are decades old, but what has recently emerged as "Europe's Horse Meat Scandal" has once again highlighted the role of culture in defining what constitutes an edible animal, not just among anthropologists, but in popular media. And, of course, as an anthropologist and a horse girl, I just had to write about it.

I grew up riding horses. I love them. Love them. I have devoted years of my life to riding and caring for these magical creatures, working with them, and trying to rehab/rehome/and otherwise save them. I do not eat them though I try very hard to understand, and be ok with the fact, that others do.

           

So, several years ago, shortly after visiting some family friends in Switzerland, my father had the irrepressible need to share what he found to be a very funny experience. At dinner one evening, he asked the family's 9 year old daughter, "Do you like horses?"to which she responded, "Mmm, yum" while rubbing her belly. As my father tells it, he about fell out of his chair laughing as he pictured my response had I been there.

My father has spent a decent portion of his young adult and adult life living in France and has himself eaten horse so he did not find this statement or the behavior shocking, though given the context of his personal life (me!), he was certainly surprised in a "young girls like to ride horses not eat them!" kind of way. As much as I prefer to be culturally respectful when I travel, I cannot see myself voluntarily eating a horse (though there is some speculation that I have unknowingly done so at some point...) and when I've lived in places where horse meat was common, I've always found it moderately upsetting.

But here's the thing. I'm an anthropologist. It's my job to think about how culture has shaped the way we (people, so this includes me!) think about and define everything, including what we eat. So, intellectually, I get it. I understand why other cultures eat horse meat and I find it rather surprising when the Huffington Post tags articles on the topic with comments like "Gross!". I'm not a vegan - or even a vegetarian these days - but I do believe the critique that once we have made the decision to kill a living creature for our own sustenance, does it really matter which animal we kill? is worth while. Because this is where culture comes in. It is culture that defines which animals are edible and which ones are not. For example, this is why Americans are notoriously squeamish about foods that may be perfectly ordinary in other places - think escargot (snails) or crustaceans with their heads on and eyes intact. Whether based on religion, material/economic importance, or historical sentiment, culture guides the foods we should and should not consume.

Yet here's the thing that gets me every time. I know all of this and it still doesn't matter. I won't eat horse any more readily than I would eat dog, and while I know there is some personal sentiment involved, I don't think it's just about my personal attachment to these animals. After all, I can't imagine myself eating cat either, although I don't much care for cats in general and have never had a close relationship with one. In parts of South America, people eat guinea pigs. I have never had a guinea pig as a pet, but to me they simply don't constitute food. I don't find the prospect of eating bugs emotionally upsetting but I do find it stomach turning.

Part of what is so interesting about the European "horse meat scandal" is the fact that horse's role in Europe and Canada is quite similar to its role in the US. In all these places horses are used in work, and primarily for recreational purposes - whether as pets or sport horses. However, perhaps - and I'm no expert on this so I'm certainly open to alternative suggestions - the meaning of the horse still differs slightly in these varied contexts. The horse, in American culture, holds a special, almost mythical place that I'm not sure it holds in European or even Canadian societies. In the US, the horse dominates our lore about the Native American (becoming an integral part of both "noble savage" and "dominating white man" discourses). The horse is a vehicle for hero stories on race tracks and in movies about race tracks (the fact that these animals' realities rarely reach mythic standards is a totally separate issue). The horse represents the American West. Our relationship with horses comes to represent our relationship with nature and as such, the relationship between nature and culture (see Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence's Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and the Tame). Thus, in addition to my personal relationship with the animal, all of these cultural factors shape a broader, shared cultural meaning of the horse that I draw upon when deciding how I feel about its consumption. As an anthropologist, I can intellectualize my culture all I want, but I cannot completely remove myself from it.

That girl vs. this girl . . . from Hillary

Inspired by my friend and colleague's recent blog post and a visit from a long-time friend, I want to revisit the concept of the changing or evolving "self"both personally and, of course, anthropologically. First, let's take a quick glance at the personal, using the same template Hillary used - "That girl vs. this girl" a ten-item comparison of myself ten years ago to myself today.

That girl . . . 
1) Lived and worked on a horse farm in beautiful rural central Virginia.
2) Was undeniably restless and set to embark on 6+ more years of vagabondish wandering adventures, both stateside and abroad. She didn't ever want to live anywhere for more than a year.
3) Rolled her own cigarettes, wore Carhartt insulated overalls daily, and didn't bat an eye at spending a week's salary on a pair of shoes.
4) Had a BA in Anthropology but wasn't sure what kind of career path she wanted to follow.
5) Wrote poetry while walking, mucking out stalls, or riding through pastures; then performed the poems at open mic nights.
6) Hated the holidays and always asked to work during them so she wouldn't have to deal; she was often called a "grinch" for this.
7) Had no interest in children but buckets of affection and maternal instinct toward dogs, horses, snakes and other non-human creatures.
8) Got tattoos to mark changes in life and self.
9) Still thought she could save the world, or at least other people.
10) Surrounded herself with brilliant, creative, thoughtful people who challenged her to grow and experience new things.

This girl . . .
1) Has been living in the same town for almost 6 years (the longest she's lived anywhere since she was 9 years old!) and just bought a house with her husband.
2) Hasn't smoked a cigarette in at least 4 years and doesn't miss it at all.
3) Gets tattoos because they are beautiful.
4) Is happily directing that maternal instinct toward the funniest, sweetest dog ever.
5) Dropped out of nursing school and abandoned a funded PhD in medical anthropology, but wound up with a master's, a PhD, and career that she loves.
6) Still has a ton to learn about everything, and is grateful to be surrounded by people and critters who are wonderful teachers.
7) Is generally not all that restless. But when she gets "itchy feet" she annoys her partner by endlessly shopping for airline tickets and reading about possible adventure destinations.
8) Climbs rocks (this could never have been predicted), rides her badass horse, and knits in her spare time or to relieve stress.
9) Is still not really a big fan of holidays...or her birthday...except Tour de Fat. Tour de Fat is the greatest!
10) Has lived in 9 states and 3 non-US countries, and has finally figured out that, for her, home isn't a place, it's a person.

An anthropology of change

This little blog was a fun enough exercise in personal reflection, which seems appropriate this time of year and given some major milestones I've experienced in the last year. But it also makes me think about the concept of change in American culture, a concept that I vividly remember writing about on my MA exam back in 2007 (I think it was 2007 anyway). 

In American culture, we are certainly fixated on the individual. We are obsessed with individual rights (both in good and bad ways), we have great admiration for individual creativity and can appreciate out of the box thinking, and we view the self as something that changes over time, that we can expand and grow and improve. Reflections such as "that girl vs this girl" are fun, for sure, but they are also culturally meaningful. This isn't a reflection on experiences, but an examination of who I "was" versus who I "am". And, as an American, I embrace this fully. I think it's good to think about the ways I have changed - both for the better and, although maybe less fun to think about, for the worse. People always say we become more rigid, less willing to change as we get older. I think this exercise in reflection may be a great way to check in ten years down the road. But I wonder, what, really is "self"?

There are some scholars out there who have talked extensively about the concept of "self" and how this self may or may not be seen as maleable in different cultures. The concept of a maleable or changeable self has actually been suggested to put a person at risk for eating disorders or make plastic surgery more culturally acceptable. On the other side of this, cultures that see the self as core, unchanging, a given, may actually be protective against some of these things. What part of the "self" must be malleable to make a particular individual (and all those who share a culture with her) vulnerable to an eating disorder? Some have talked about a linking of the socioeconomic self (one's status) to the physical self. Some have talked about cultural ideas about normal or abnormal behaviors and how, once new norms are internalized, one's sense of self has changed. But I have rarely seen an anthropologist explicitly define this word that we throw around so often.

And when I turn the lens upon my own above reflection, and examine my own changing "self", I am forced to ask, who am I really? For example, as a young person, I had ideas about myself and engaged in certain behaviors that felt core, central to who I "truly" was. Wanderlust was an enormous part of this self. I moved often, I adored the excitement of learning a new neighborhood, culture, language, and making new friends who were perhaps nothing like and possibly wouldn't even like my friends from past lives/adventures. But, as my little reflection shows, wandering is no longer a part of my life. The desire to wander still comes in waves, but it is controllable, "wanderlust" is not necessarily inherently linked to "wandering". So is my true "self" the desire? Or is it behavior? In my research, active methamphetamine users are constantly fighting to avoid the many labels ascribed to them: tweaker, addict, meth head, etc. They may say, "I'm addicted" but most don't view their drug use as a core part of their selves. 12-step programs sort of do though. They view "addict" as an unchangeable part of the self and "drug use" as the changeable part. So again, it seems that in any consideration of the concept of self, or of behavior, or of change, it is worthwhile to explore what we mean by self, and which parts are malleable or not.