As those of you who know me in person or regularly follow this blog are aware, my relatively recent return to a consistent yoga practice has brought up a number of challenges - physical, emotional, and psychological. First among these has been the notion of self-care that is such an important tenet of yoga practice. If you have ever been in a yoga class, or followed one online, or read a yoga book, or even used one of those asana apps on your phone, you know it: the instructor repeatedly reminds you to "listen to your body," "don't jam yourself," "take rests if you need to," "find your edge, but don't force yourself past it."
I grew up with a competitive American spirit. As a child, I competed in two sports at the state and national levels and I have always been exceptionally hard on myself, not necessarily expecting to win or even outperform others, but always expecting to improve and perform my "best," whatever that is. And that's just the thing; my concept of my personal best was based on a rather linear imagined trajectory, not on the very non-linear reality of my life and the multitude of factors that shape our performance in anything. Along with this ego of performance expectation came a drive to "train" at a certain level as well. Though I no longer ride horses competitively, I find it difficult to ride "for fun" outside of a training program, and expect myself to commit six days a week to it. Though I climb recreationally, I find it frustrating that, unless I devote at least 4 days per week to it, I just don't have the naturally powerful physique to make progress or even avoid regression. This struggle to let go of my own ego in sports has actually kept me from enjoying them to the max in the busy and complicated context that is my everyday adult life.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, when I began practicing yoga on a regular basis, I found myself beginning to fall into this same trap. If I missed a day, I felt guilty. I wanted to be a "good yogi" and this meant practicing ___________ . . . it started with every other day and morphed into daily. When I missed a day because I was tired, or because I climbed, or because I just felt like writing all day instead, I was consumed by guilt. Although I was learning the ethic of self-care on the mat (I try to choose my practices according to my needs on a given day, I have learned to laugh when I fall out of a pose rather than becoming frustrated), I was blatantly ignoring it in my daily decisions around whether or not to practice.
Yesterday, while I was playing around on twitter after a long day of teaching a psychological anthropology unit, I came across this fun, tongue-in-cheek article. Not surprisingly, the thing we need to stop saying about yoga that resonated with me the most is "I'm so mad I missed yoga yesterday. I wanted to go every day this week." Kate Stone, the article's author - a yoga instructor and personal trainer - insightfully wondered why we say these things, asking, Why? Did your body want to move that much?
The article, and specifically the author's challenge to the externally and systematically imposed expectations made me think about the lesson I had taught earlier in the day. In particular, anthropologist Eileen Anderson-Fye's exploration of body image among adolescent girls in Belize. The notion of self-care was something that Anderson-Fye argues is a possible protective factor against disordered body image and eating behavior in a country where beauty is highly valued and Western media is visible. Other researchers have posited that Americans' sense of the self as being changeable, something always "in progress," contributes to our relative risk for eating disorders.
But maybe it's also this relative absence of an ethic of self care - despite living in a highly individualistic society - that places us at risk for all kinds of things. That makes it so hard to listen to our bodies, even in a yoga class, because we are more concerned with meeting expectations, with meeting an externally mediated and measured notion of "success" or "progress." I see it all over the place: in my plethora of friends who brag about not taking vacation time; in those I know who pride themselves on working through their off days or wake in the middle of the night and rather than reading themselves to sleep, choose to get up and work; in the bristling judgment I've faced when I explain that time spent with my husband, my horse, and my dog is more important to me to me than following a particular career path. In essence, to some degree, one could argue that our culture of ego has created a culture of braggart martyrs, of people who sacrifice themselves for others (or for work), but rather than doing so in quiet acceptance or even enjoyment, do so for the status associated with the embodiment of a particular notion of the ideal self.
However, the importance of self-care is something that is receiving increased attention, especially for those who work in the caring professions. In essence, people are starting to recognize that to avoid burnout and actually increase efficacy in helping others, we must honor and nurture ourselves and our own needs and even wants. And this growing appreciation is something that I've elected to prioritize for myself. I guess the trick at this point will be keeping the ego out of self-care itself...hard as it may be, when I decide to listen to my body and skip that yoga class, to take off work when I'm sick, to spend time with family instead of working overtime, I also need to avoid judging others who don't follow the same path. Because, at the end of the day, maybe self-care looks a little different for all of us.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
How 'bout that weather?
When I first moved to a farm just outside of Charlottesville, Virginia in 2002, I was immediately struck by several things. Coming directly from a year in New York City and four in Los Angeles, I was blown away that the farm's main "hand," a lifelong Virginian who must have been in his 70s, said hello with a nod and a hand wave every single time we passed in a day; the local grocer/sandwich shop took checks; and, the weather was a valid and frequent topic of conversation.
After nearly a decade of living in places where snow didn't really happen and one rarely needed to check the weather to decide what to wear (I lived in the Phoenix area for 4 years prior to moving to Los Angeles for university), weather just wasn't something I thought of as an actual conversation piece. And in New York, the weather just never really seemed relevant - maybe because so much of life centers around the built environment rather than the natural one? - maybe because it just wasn't "cool" to make this sort of small talk? I don't really know either way, but I was utterly startled by the degree to which, in Virginia, I talked about the weather.
And now, living in Colorado, a place where the weather is rarely predictable - I mean, we can get 70 degrees and sunny skies in February and a snowstorm in June - I find that, once again, I talk about the weather all the time.
We have had relentless wind for about a week now, and I noticed that in the last few days especially, the weather - specifically, the wind - has been central to most of my casual interactions with people. I ran into a neighbor while walking the dog this morning and after a quick exchange about his upcoming yard sale, we parted ways, ending our conversation with, "I'm about ready for this wind to quit." "No kidding! I've had about enough." I had a similar conversation with my yoga instructor yesterday and more in depth versions with several friends. The wind is making us all feel a little nuts, so perhaps it's especially relevant. But I think it's fair to say, the weather in Colorado always seems important.
And that's where I've begun to ask myself some questions. Why is that in some parts of the world, in some parts of the country, weather is such an acceptable - and genuine feeling - topic of conversation, while in others it's simply not? In essence, my experiences and observations of others' tell me there are a couple of overlapping factors that may make weather an appropriate conversation topic: first, the actual weather in the place (i.e., is it quickly changing, does it come with extra challenges such as snow, etc.); second, the degree to which people's day-to-day activities involve being outside in the weather.
So, a few examples:
CONSISTENTLY GOOD, BUT UNEVENTFUL, WEATHER + OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES = DON'T TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER
In places like Los Angeles, at least when I lived there, weather is pretty much always nice. It's almost like living in climate control. That the weather will be good is virtually a given, so even if you engage in a lot of outdoor activities, you just don't think about the weather. Arizona was much like this when I lived there, as well. I know people bitch about the heat, but in my experience, that's mostly people who don't live there. We rode horses year round in an uncovered outdoor arena. In the summer we rode early in the morning. When it rained maybe we didn't ride for a couple of days. But when it came to day to day living, the weather just wasn't ever worth talking about.
4-SEASONS, PLENTY OF BAD WEATHER + SUPER URBAN = DON'T TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER
My dear friend, M, simply despises all talk about the weather, and I've always associated this with the fact that talking about the weather is decidedly uncouth while M is pretty much one of the "cool" folks. Cool people, urban people, just don't talk about the weather. It's a form of small talk left to those of us considered "bumpkins" (I am totally included in this categorization, by the way!). But in the last several years, I've noticed M starting to talk about the weather, and not in a mocking or ironic way. Rather, he genuinely gives a shit about it. He's also been engaging in a lot more outdoor activities - he has a dog now and hikes more than he ever did in the past - and has been moving regularly between the urban center of NYC (where we moved together over a decade ago), upstate New York, the pacific northwest, and southern California. Perhaps what I once attributed to cultural valuing actually has more to do with lifestyle; perhaps weather doesn't seem important when most of our time is spent indoors, when we can move about through subway tunnels, in and out of air-conditioned cabs and restaurants and workplaces, when we're moving about a city with a complete immersion in its built spaces.
SEASONS, PLENTY OF GOOD & BAD WEATHER + OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES = LOTS OF TALK ABOUT WEATHER
As I alluded to above, I found myself really starting to talk and think an awful lot about weather in smaller communities that experience regular and irregular changes in weather (Charlottesville, VA; Streitdorf, Austria; Fort Collins, CO). It just so happens that in these places my life has also heavily centered around the outdoors. In Virginia and Austria I worked on horse farms. In Colorado...well, in Colorado I think all of our lives center around the outdoors to some extent. I ride horses and rock climb and walk my dog. Many of the people I know think nothing of riding their bikes year round, commuting anywhere from 5-15 each way in well-below-freezing temperatures, high winds, and blizzards. Life for these folks is perhaps not disrupted by the weather, but it's sure affected by it. For me, a very vocal hater of winter, life is seriously unsettled. While, in the summer my daily activities get me outside for 6 hours a day or more, in the winter I must transition some of these activities into indoor activities (e.g., I climb at a gym or ride in an indoor arena), usually bitterly. Not a cold weather person, I find winter incredibly disruptive. Just as a heat-hating climber/hiker/mountain biker may find Arizona's summers disruptive as they move them indoors or force them to readjust their ideal schedule. But that's the thing with Colorado; it seems like everybody is outside all the time if they can be, so weather is of considerable importance and relevance to our lives.
So maybe, at the end of the day, these tendencies to talk about the weather or not, the definition of such talk as unintellectual or irrelevant small talk, have less to do with some abstracted notion of a "cultural norm" and more to do with the realities of each of our day-to-day realities.
After nearly a decade of living in places where snow didn't really happen and one rarely needed to check the weather to decide what to wear (I lived in the Phoenix area for 4 years prior to moving to Los Angeles for university), weather just wasn't something I thought of as an actual conversation piece. And in New York, the weather just never really seemed relevant - maybe because so much of life centers around the built environment rather than the natural one? - maybe because it just wasn't "cool" to make this sort of small talk? I don't really know either way, but I was utterly startled by the degree to which, in Virginia, I talked about the weather.
And now, living in Colorado, a place where the weather is rarely predictable - I mean, we can get 70 degrees and sunny skies in February and a snowstorm in June - I find that, once again, I talk about the weather all the time.
 |
| January 2013 |
 |
| May 2013 |
We have had relentless wind for about a week now, and I noticed that in the last few days especially, the weather - specifically, the wind - has been central to most of my casual interactions with people. I ran into a neighbor while walking the dog this morning and after a quick exchange about his upcoming yard sale, we parted ways, ending our conversation with, "I'm about ready for this wind to quit." "No kidding! I've had about enough." I had a similar conversation with my yoga instructor yesterday and more in depth versions with several friends. The wind is making us all feel a little nuts, so perhaps it's especially relevant. But I think it's fair to say, the weather in Colorado always seems important.
And that's where I've begun to ask myself some questions. Why is that in some parts of the world, in some parts of the country, weather is such an acceptable - and genuine feeling - topic of conversation, while in others it's simply not? In essence, my experiences and observations of others' tell me there are a couple of overlapping factors that may make weather an appropriate conversation topic: first, the actual weather in the place (i.e., is it quickly changing, does it come with extra challenges such as snow, etc.); second, the degree to which people's day-to-day activities involve being outside in the weather.
So, a few examples:
CONSISTENTLY GOOD, BUT UNEVENTFUL, WEATHER + OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES = DON'T TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER
In places like Los Angeles, at least when I lived there, weather is pretty much always nice. It's almost like living in climate control. That the weather will be good is virtually a given, so even if you engage in a lot of outdoor activities, you just don't think about the weather. Arizona was much like this when I lived there, as well. I know people bitch about the heat, but in my experience, that's mostly people who don't live there. We rode horses year round in an uncovered outdoor arena. In the summer we rode early in the morning. When it rained maybe we didn't ride for a couple of days. But when it came to day to day living, the weather just wasn't ever worth talking about.
4-SEASONS, PLENTY OF BAD WEATHER + SUPER URBAN = DON'T TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER
My dear friend, M, simply despises all talk about the weather, and I've always associated this with the fact that talking about the weather is decidedly uncouth while M is pretty much one of the "cool" folks. Cool people, urban people, just don't talk about the weather. It's a form of small talk left to those of us considered "bumpkins" (I am totally included in this categorization, by the way!). But in the last several years, I've noticed M starting to talk about the weather, and not in a mocking or ironic way. Rather, he genuinely gives a shit about it. He's also been engaging in a lot more outdoor activities - he has a dog now and hikes more than he ever did in the past - and has been moving regularly between the urban center of NYC (where we moved together over a decade ago), upstate New York, the pacific northwest, and southern California. Perhaps what I once attributed to cultural valuing actually has more to do with lifestyle; perhaps weather doesn't seem important when most of our time is spent indoors, when we can move about through subway tunnels, in and out of air-conditioned cabs and restaurants and workplaces, when we're moving about a city with a complete immersion in its built spaces.
SEASONS, PLENTY OF GOOD & BAD WEATHER + OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES = LOTS OF TALK ABOUT WEATHER
As I alluded to above, I found myself really starting to talk and think an awful lot about weather in smaller communities that experience regular and irregular changes in weather (Charlottesville, VA; Streitdorf, Austria; Fort Collins, CO). It just so happens that in these places my life has also heavily centered around the outdoors. In Virginia and Austria I worked on horse farms. In Colorado...well, in Colorado I think all of our lives center around the outdoors to some extent. I ride horses and rock climb and walk my dog. Many of the people I know think nothing of riding their bikes year round, commuting anywhere from 5-15 each way in well-below-freezing temperatures, high winds, and blizzards. Life for these folks is perhaps not disrupted by the weather, but it's sure affected by it. For me, a very vocal hater of winter, life is seriously unsettled. While, in the summer my daily activities get me outside for 6 hours a day or more, in the winter I must transition some of these activities into indoor activities (e.g., I climb at a gym or ride in an indoor arena), usually bitterly. Not a cold weather person, I find winter incredibly disruptive. Just as a heat-hating climber/hiker/mountain biker may find Arizona's summers disruptive as they move them indoors or force them to readjust their ideal schedule. But that's the thing with Colorado; it seems like everybody is outside all the time if they can be, so weather is of considerable importance and relevance to our lives.
So maybe, at the end of the day, these tendencies to talk about the weather or not, the definition of such talk as unintellectual or irrelevant small talk, have less to do with some abstracted notion of a "cultural norm" and more to do with the realities of each of our day-to-day realities.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Food as culture: The devaluing of convenience
Food is a funny thing. The ways we eat and the foods we eat tell us a lot about cultures. Not only do these things differ between cultures, but they also give us insights into who belongs to various groups within a given culture. Units on food and nutrition are always popular among my undergraduate classes, and there are certainly times I've wondered why I didn't pursue a career path that had more to do with food. After all, I have always been fascinated by what is considered food, rules about eating, etc. I've written a bit on the question of what constitutes foods in different cultures previously; but what I'm really interested in right now has to do with what we can learn about a culture by thinking about how foods are made and how food, as a priority, fits in with broader cultural systems of meaning. And how shifts in eating may be reflections of or responses to larger cultural shifts.
My summer of 2013 was pretty exquisite. In addition to my standard summers' fare of road trips to stunning canyons and cliff faces, 2013 was sprinkled with an abundance of work-related and for-pleasure travel in the US and Europe, something I was quite exuberant about...except for one thing - my panic about the potential challenge of finding gluten free foods while on many of these trips. I've never been the bravest eater when it comes to meats, but other than that, I've always been willing and able to try just about any food at least once. Since I quit eating gluten due to a sensitivity (I've never been diagnosed with anything but was sick for years until I gave it up), though, I've had to become a much more tentative eater. Unfortunately, this has made one of my other favorite pastimes (besides eating), travel, far more stressful.
Last summer, it was a several day stop-off in Paris to visit with my father that worried me the most. Every time I've visited France in the past decade, I've felt awful the entire time, and in recent years it had been getting progressively worse. I had initially assumed that this had much to do with the abundance of butter and heavy creams present in French cuisine. Thus, since eating loads of French food in Paris has both considerable cultural and personal (my father LOVES French food!) significance and happens constantly, I had for years dreaded these visits. This trip, my first (to France) since figuring out my gluten sensitivity, promised to be no different, and I started stressing about it as soon as I bought my ticket.
See, the thing is, while when I travel with my husband or on my own, I know that I can easily seek out restaurants that will either have "natural" gluten free options (e.g., Thai food is super easy for me to eat) or that are readily accommodating (e.g., have labeled menus), these things are just not options when dining with my dad. He opts for heavy European (especially French) food whenever eating out and, when in France, especially enjoys his traditional meals in brasseries and higher end, but older school restaurants. And, of course, his breakfasts come from the bakery on his block. From pretty much all perspectives, I really admire this about my dad. I love that he is so excited about French food and about food in general...but with my (non-voluntary) diet restrictions I was worried.
But something totally unexpected happened on this trip. The first night that we went out to eat, we simply explained my limitations to the server and asked if the particular sauce that came on the fish I'd ordered would be safe. He looked at us almost in confusion..."I don't know why this sauce would have flour in it, but I'll ask the chef." (In my head, I thought, flour is hidden in everything!) This happened numerous times and each time I was safe - no hidden flour, no hidden gluten, and when galettes were made from buckwheat, they were made from just that, with no wheat flour added. As it turned out, eating gluten free in Paris was easy so long as I skipped the obvious - no baguette, no croissant, no pastry, so the only tragic thing about being gluten free in Paris was not having the time to check out any of the city's gluten free patisseries or restaurants (this is the one I really wanted to visit!).
As my dad and I reflected on the ease with which I was able to avoid gluten, he recalled a related experience he'd had with his wife. A pescetarian, S is careful to avoid soups in many restaurants because of the likelihood that they use chicken or beef stock. In the US, she always asks and about 50% of the time veggie soup is made with veggie stock but the rest of the time it's got some sort of animal base to that broth (maybe this is worse because of their Texas residence?). Anyway, apparently whenever she asks this same question in Paris - "Excuse me, but is this veggie soup made with chicken/beef stock?" - she gets a similar response to the one I received when asking about flour/gluten, only perhaps even more startled..."Of course not! Why on earth would we make vegetable soup with meat stock? That would make it a different soup!"
Hmm...they are, of course, correct. It would change the character and the flavor and the texture of the food, things that, in French cuisine, are of the utmost import. French cuisine remains, for the most part, embedded in an ethic of slow, from scratch, and deliberate. That is, unless the flour is adding something beyond thickness (i.e., a roux), it doesn't go in.
All of this really got me thinking about the American diet and eating gluten free and how this journey in eating has made me more aware of some peculiarities of food in this country and how they've been shifting in recent years. When I cook at home, it's remarkably easy to cook gluten free. I have loads of options - some leaving out grain altogether, some choosing to eat gluten free grains, some choosing gluten free versions of traditionally wheat-based products - when I cook for myself, and find that, most often, I prefer to leave the grain out or eat something like rice or quinoa. When I make soups and sauces, I have no need for flour and on the very rare occasion that I need to thicken something, I use cornstarch. I admittedly do tend to avoid cooking the types of foods that require a roux or similar, but I never cooked that way anyway so I haven't noticed the difference.
It's going out (especially outside of the bubble that Fort Collins can be) or trying to eat processed foods (not something I do very often, fortunately) that can be tricky. Because the hard thing about avoiding gluten in the American diet isn't in avoiding pasta or bread, it's that gluten has a tendency to make its way into everything. It's a short-cut, both for time and money it seems. Apparently, some folks even bind hamburgers with flour. Sometimes, in American versions of Indian or Thai restaurants, curries are thickened with it (not something I found in Thailand or Malaysia, where curries tended to be thin or thickened with rice flour). It just shows up in everything. And this seems to be a trend in American eating that I find remarkably telling.
Like much of life in the US, in recent decades, it seems that our food is often based on convenience and cost rather than flavor or authenticity or quality or freshness of ingredients. Through an anthropological lens, the value placed upon convenience in our society is of considerable importance. The need for convenient food is something that is an indicator of the so-called Protestant work ethic. As in, "I work 80 hours a week, so I need food that is easy." The emphasis on cheap production is a reflection of a society that places great value on profit motive, but also one that sees considerable wealth disparities. Whereas, in France, it is perfectly acceptable to take hours mid-day to eat a meal, in the US, we too often eat lunch at our desks and pride ourselves on it. In a country that has a history of placing much greater value on consumption of goods rather than experiences, the art of dining and the value of food are of little relevance (to many).
Part of why this stands out so clearly to me right now is that, lately, it seems like things may be shifting. Yes, we Americans still seem to be especially prone to fad diets with little sense of cultural food identity (at least compared to many other places), and yes, we still often choose convenience over quality; but, the multitude of varying philosophies about food and lifestyle that abound these days are rooted in ethics of going back to whole foods, cooking from scratch, and connecting to the source(s) of one's food. It seems that, increasingly, regardless of the particular diet fad one has directed his/her attention toward - that is, whether one eats vegan and only buys from the farmer's market or is paleo and only gets foods direct from farmers and ranchers - there is an increasingly mainstream movement toward knowing what that food is, knowing not only how to prepare it, but maybe even how to raise it.
And, of course, this all makes me wonder whether perhaps there are changes afoot. Are people trading hours at a desk for hours in a garden, tracking elk, or behind a stove, shifting the relative cultural value of work and that of food? I hope so. As, if given the choice, it seems to me that convenience is overrated.
*****
My summer of 2013 was pretty exquisite. In addition to my standard summers' fare of road trips to stunning canyons and cliff faces, 2013 was sprinkled with an abundance of work-related and for-pleasure travel in the US and Europe, something I was quite exuberant about...except for one thing - my panic about the potential challenge of finding gluten free foods while on many of these trips. I've never been the bravest eater when it comes to meats, but other than that, I've always been willing and able to try just about any food at least once. Since I quit eating gluten due to a sensitivity (I've never been diagnosed with anything but was sick for years until I gave it up), though, I've had to become a much more tentative eater. Unfortunately, this has made one of my other favorite pastimes (besides eating), travel, far more stressful.
Last summer, it was a several day stop-off in Paris to visit with my father that worried me the most. Every time I've visited France in the past decade, I've felt awful the entire time, and in recent years it had been getting progressively worse. I had initially assumed that this had much to do with the abundance of butter and heavy creams present in French cuisine. Thus, since eating loads of French food in Paris has both considerable cultural and personal (my father LOVES French food!) significance and happens constantly, I had for years dreaded these visits. This trip, my first (to France) since figuring out my gluten sensitivity, promised to be no different, and I started stressing about it as soon as I bought my ticket.
See, the thing is, while when I travel with my husband or on my own, I know that I can easily seek out restaurants that will either have "natural" gluten free options (e.g., Thai food is super easy for me to eat) or that are readily accommodating (e.g., have labeled menus), these things are just not options when dining with my dad. He opts for heavy European (especially French) food whenever eating out and, when in France, especially enjoys his traditional meals in brasseries and higher end, but older school restaurants. And, of course, his breakfasts come from the bakery on his block. From pretty much all perspectives, I really admire this about my dad. I love that he is so excited about French food and about food in general...but with my (non-voluntary) diet restrictions I was worried.
But something totally unexpected happened on this trip. The first night that we went out to eat, we simply explained my limitations to the server and asked if the particular sauce that came on the fish I'd ordered would be safe. He looked at us almost in confusion..."I don't know why this sauce would have flour in it, but I'll ask the chef." (In my head, I thought, flour is hidden in everything!) This happened numerous times and each time I was safe - no hidden flour, no hidden gluten, and when galettes were made from buckwheat, they were made from just that, with no wheat flour added. As it turned out, eating gluten free in Paris was easy so long as I skipped the obvious - no baguette, no croissant, no pastry, so the only tragic thing about being gluten free in Paris was not having the time to check out any of the city's gluten free patisseries or restaurants (this is the one I really wanted to visit!).
As my dad and I reflected on the ease with which I was able to avoid gluten, he recalled a related experience he'd had with his wife. A pescetarian, S is careful to avoid soups in many restaurants because of the likelihood that they use chicken or beef stock. In the US, she always asks and about 50% of the time veggie soup is made with veggie stock but the rest of the time it's got some sort of animal base to that broth (maybe this is worse because of their Texas residence?). Anyway, apparently whenever she asks this same question in Paris - "Excuse me, but is this veggie soup made with chicken/beef stock?" - she gets a similar response to the one I received when asking about flour/gluten, only perhaps even more startled..."Of course not! Why on earth would we make vegetable soup with meat stock? That would make it a different soup!"
Hmm...they are, of course, correct. It would change the character and the flavor and the texture of the food, things that, in French cuisine, are of the utmost import. French cuisine remains, for the most part, embedded in an ethic of slow, from scratch, and deliberate. That is, unless the flour is adding something beyond thickness (i.e., a roux), it doesn't go in.
All of this really got me thinking about the American diet and eating gluten free and how this journey in eating has made me more aware of some peculiarities of food in this country and how they've been shifting in recent years. When I cook at home, it's remarkably easy to cook gluten free. I have loads of options - some leaving out grain altogether, some choosing to eat gluten free grains, some choosing gluten free versions of traditionally wheat-based products - when I cook for myself, and find that, most often, I prefer to leave the grain out or eat something like rice or quinoa. When I make soups and sauces, I have no need for flour and on the very rare occasion that I need to thicken something, I use cornstarch. I admittedly do tend to avoid cooking the types of foods that require a roux or similar, but I never cooked that way anyway so I haven't noticed the difference.
It's going out (especially outside of the bubble that Fort Collins can be) or trying to eat processed foods (not something I do very often, fortunately) that can be tricky. Because the hard thing about avoiding gluten in the American diet isn't in avoiding pasta or bread, it's that gluten has a tendency to make its way into everything. It's a short-cut, both for time and money it seems. Apparently, some folks even bind hamburgers with flour. Sometimes, in American versions of Indian or Thai restaurants, curries are thickened with it (not something I found in Thailand or Malaysia, where curries tended to be thin or thickened with rice flour). It just shows up in everything. And this seems to be a trend in American eating that I find remarkably telling.
Like much of life in the US, in recent decades, it seems that our food is often based on convenience and cost rather than flavor or authenticity or quality or freshness of ingredients. Through an anthropological lens, the value placed upon convenience in our society is of considerable importance. The need for convenient food is something that is an indicator of the so-called Protestant work ethic. As in, "I work 80 hours a week, so I need food that is easy." The emphasis on cheap production is a reflection of a society that places great value on profit motive, but also one that sees considerable wealth disparities. Whereas, in France, it is perfectly acceptable to take hours mid-day to eat a meal, in the US, we too often eat lunch at our desks and pride ourselves on it. In a country that has a history of placing much greater value on consumption of goods rather than experiences, the art of dining and the value of food are of little relevance (to many).
Part of why this stands out so clearly to me right now is that, lately, it seems like things may be shifting. Yes, we Americans still seem to be especially prone to fad diets with little sense of cultural food identity (at least compared to many other places), and yes, we still often choose convenience over quality; but, the multitude of varying philosophies about food and lifestyle that abound these days are rooted in ethics of going back to whole foods, cooking from scratch, and connecting to the source(s) of one's food. It seems that, increasingly, regardless of the particular diet fad one has directed his/her attention toward - that is, whether one eats vegan and only buys from the farmer's market or is paleo and only gets foods direct from farmers and ranchers - there is an increasingly mainstream movement toward knowing what that food is, knowing not only how to prepare it, but maybe even how to raise it.
And, of course, this all makes me wonder whether perhaps there are changes afoot. Are people trading hours at a desk for hours in a garden, tracking elk, or behind a stove, shifting the relative cultural value of work and that of food? I hope so. As, if given the choice, it seems to me that convenience is overrated.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Life reboot, yoga teacher training in India
Again and again, I have turned to yoga in times of struggle and times of loss.Yoga has taught me many things over the years, but most of all, to appreciate the moment and to accept myself and others without judgment. Currently in the midst of an exciting and frightening career change, I once again look to yoga to offer tools for and acceptance of personal transformation. However, this time, I want to take it one step further. In addition to deepening my own practice, I want to train to teach yoga here in Colorado. So, I'm asking for your help to accomplish these goals of sharing and teaching the many lessons yoga has to offer while re-energizing my life along the way.
Always an anthropologist and a wanderer at heart, I want to do my teacher training in India, the birthplace of yoga. I plan to attend a 5 week teacher training at an ashram in Rishikesh, India. This course will not only be personally transformative, but will cover yoga philosophy, anatomy, asanas (poses), chants and prayers, and cultural aspects of Indian festivals. In other words, it will also prepare me to teach yoga, write about yoga, and guide people in living by the principles of yoga.
If interested, this is also a chance to follow someone through the teacher training process and experience of ashram living as I will (if permitted) blog throughout the journey or keep a journal to share upon my return. You can follow me now and later atanthropologyofthefamiliar.blogspot.com.
I am asking for your help to cover the following anticipated expenses. Any amount helps and all donations are appreciated!
Course/living expenses paid to the ashram - $1,000
Airfare - $1,500
Vaccinations - $1,000
TOTAL - $3,500
Thank you so much for your support! Even if you can't make a donation, please consider sharing.
Always an anthropologist and a wanderer at heart, I want to do my teacher training in India, the birthplace of yoga. I plan to attend a 5 week teacher training at an ashram in Rishikesh, India. This course will not only be personally transformative, but will cover yoga philosophy, anatomy, asanas (poses), chants and prayers, and cultural aspects of Indian festivals. In other words, it will also prepare me to teach yoga, write about yoga, and guide people in living by the principles of yoga.
If interested, this is also a chance to follow someone through the teacher training process and experience of ashram living as I will (if permitted) blog throughout the journey or keep a journal to share upon my return. You can follow me now and later atanthropologyofthefamiliar.blogspot.com.
I am asking for your help to cover the following anticipated expenses. Any amount helps and all donations are appreciated!
Course/living expenses paid to the ashram - $1,000
Airfare - $1,500
Vaccinations - $1,000
TOTAL - $3,500
Thank you so much for your support! Even if you can't make a donation, please consider sharing.
Monday, March 31, 2014
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.
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| 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.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
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.
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.
Monday, January 20, 2014
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?
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?
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