Lady with the red pants: When yoga is humiliating
Saturday, March 29, 2014 at 2:41PM
Originally posted on Recovering Yoga Novemeber 2010, and later on my Medium account.
I was once called Lady with the Red Pants by a strict yoga teacher with whom I’d been practicing yoga for 6 years.
humiliation from across the room
She called out to me from across the room with this name to give me a simple instruction. I, an avid student in her class for all those years, surely felt that I deserved more respect than this.
True, it wasn’t exactly her nature to speak to her students and thereby get to know their names. And although I knew this, and never myself attempted to introduce myself or speak to her—ever, in fact—I still felt angry at this label she gave to me. I did know for sure that I was a dedicated yogini, attending her classes regularly, and considered myself a personally powerful person, so at the time I took this comment with a grain of salt. I laughed to myself.
Sometimes I tell this story to others. But just today, I decided that I have given this imagery (and emotion) of that situation in my past too much real estate in my brain! For, the pants themselves tell the story whenever I see them. I never wear them anymore, yet I still keep them. I tell myself that I definitely have to be in the mood to wear them.