20:42 - 20.07.05
Meditation
In grade four I was the focus of a power struggle between my parents and my teacher. I was never told of it until just a few years ago, because it was deemed that what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me. Well yes. If the teacher had not taken advantage of my ignorance of the situation, that might have been so I guess. It was over a simple thing really. You see, I am left handed. So was my mom, as well as one other sister and my brother, the ambi. Grade four was when students here switched from printing to writing. My grade four teacher was absolutely determined that I would only write using my right hand. When she proposed that to my parents, they were equally insistent that what natural instincts the almighty had given me were what I was meant to have. Because she was forbidden to speak of it by my parents, the teacher took another tack. Any time I picked up a pen or touched any art supplies, she would stand over my desk with her red pen and stroke out every line I made, usually yelling at the same time. That was in front of all my classmates every day for a whole year. When I still didn't clue in to why I was getting in trouble - my writing looked just like everyone else's as far as I could tell, and a good sight better than Johnny's, Sarah's, or Wayne's - she started to pick up whatever I was working on, she would show it to the class and then tear it up, yelling the whole time. Finally, throwing a major tantrum, she forbade me to work on art projects at all. The day that happened I sat frozen on my chair, not moving, not feeling, just wishing I could evaporate in to thin air. I could see my classmates watching me, but I just pretended I didn't see any of them. I wondered where all the other adults were - wouldn't any of them help me, they had to have heard the yelling. Detached completely from those surroundings, I did, and I don't recall ever "coming back". I had always loved art and gotten really good marks up until that grade, but I never tried to draw or create with my hands again after that. How horrible does one have to be to be totally excluded from a class after all. Total humiliation and verbal abuse every school day for a year - ironically one where I had perfect attendance too. Tell my parents? No way. That was back in the days where one usually got twice the punishment at home that was meted out from whatever adult initially disciplined you. No way was I going to go home and ask for second and third helpings. Thank you very much. I just thought I must really be a terrible person, since no one ever said otherwise or intervened in anyway. That little story about Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter book "Goblet of Fire" hit me right in the heart. I'm glad the centaurs taught her a lesson.
Anyway a problem that has been building in the yoga class brought a bit of an epiphany around that time in my life today. I've mentioned before that I have Ehler Danlos syndrome. A genetic condition that makes one's connective tissue more flexible than usual, so that ones' body is also significantly more flexible than the average person. If I could have found a circus to run away to in grade four, I'm certain I would have become a world famous contortionist. I've always loved that advantage - great for gymnastics or yoga, both of which I love to do. However, it also means that my joints also appear hyperextended - they're not. That's just the way the good lord made me, rhumba walk and all. My gymnastics coach once commented that I was the only student she had ever had who even had a wiggle in her walk while doing aerials. So sue me. I was so flexible in the hips back then, that I found aerials easier to do than things that required some stability in the joints like handsprings. Just the way I was built. Some people get to be a rose, I got to be the tiger lily.
Anyway each yoga session so far, the instructor has become more and more aggressive about how wrong I am in hyperextending all my joints, even though I achieve the postures she is trying to teach with ease. My joints won't remain in the locked positions she prefers, because they don't have the capability of locking. I have rubberbands for glue(connective tissue)around my bones and muscles, while everyone else was handed good strong hemp rope or steel bands. Last class she singled me out and started heckling me in the middle of a rather difficult posture. "I'm talking to YOU,****. You're doing it all wrong." Retriggered that whole year of grade four all in one 15 minute period. Even though as an adult I knew it was her problem not mine - yoga is about trying to be a pretzel anyway - the emotions surging through me were those of the little girl. I refrained from responding at that time, because I needed to think about the stength of the response I was tempted to return to her.
Today I walked into class early, hoping to speak with her privately. She is never alone and wasn't today either with her gathering of admirers, so I just squatted quietly beside her while she was trying to get into full lotus and explained what Ehler Danlos syndrome was, stating that the way my joints interacted was what was normal and comfortable for me. Ahimsa - non-violence - which she has made a watchword in the class, meaning to her don't force anything physically, also applies to me. I'm the only person she has ever spoken to with disrespect, or I might not have responded at all. However, I decided that my response today would be my one small returning of the balance of respect for my body, the way it was made at birth, from other people. My eye colour isn't "wrong", nor is my hair nor my skin. I'm a package deal and I've had the owner's manual for this particular model for a very long time. I have the right to be respected for myself the way I am.
Funny, that few minutes of being able to speak up for myself, without worrying whether I would be punished or not, released a whole flood of feelings. Didn't really care what happened after that, but the trainer seemed to get some of the message anyway. It did cause her some discomfort, because she didn't have her "bad example" anymore to use as a teaching aid. Nor was she willing to risk "correcting" any choice I made with respect to how I approached the asanas, since my classmates had heard, sitting not more than 5 feet away, what I had said about my - her term - "disability". There are many schools of thought and practice in yoga, all of which have their value. Her one "right way" simply doesn't exist, any more than one "right" religion or one "right" political system or one "right" flower does. We all have our own path to follow that meets the needs of our body, mind and spirit. She switched from using ahimsa as her watchword to "self discipline" today, with the imputation that those who didn't follow her practice were weak or inadequately motivated. Whatever.
That few minutes showed me a core behaviour source for me. When I was defenseless as a child, I was made to believe that being humiliated and verbally abused in front of others was justified, because I was less worhty than everyone else. That despite the fact I had finished with the top marks in my grade every year I was in that school, including grade four. Yup even with a zero in art. That pattern of finding myself in situations where someone, who claimed power in my existence, was abusive just kept repeating itself over and over, because I truly didn't believe I deserved any better. As I aged I knew intellectually that wasn't the truth, but the emotional personality that had so deeply absorbed that "lesson" before the child could even understand what was happening, and that was so profoundly embedded in my instinctive defenses and responses to others, wasn't even aware of what it was that kept allowing the same pattern of abuse to occur over and over. That recurring pattern also reinforced the belief that I wasn't worthy of anything better either. The adult I am now seems to have decided that it's time to at least establish boundaries that allow me to walk away or tell others to go away, who have that abuser pattern in their own makeup. Breakthrough I guess.
Funny thing was after lunch I was chatting with one of the supervisors about an assignment I had over two years ago that had a lot of me being singled out for abuse occurring. We were actually discussing technical matters, but as I was talking I began seeing the situation in an entirely different light. Realizing again that what had occurred was an abuse of power in a supervisor and that behaviour had had a very specific purpose - to hide an illegal activity, by using diversionary tactics. I'll have to meditate in that direction tonight I think. Good night dear diary.
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