Thanks to all who have sent me THIS article over the past 4 days. Needless to say, I've seen it by now :) And I appreciate your cautions--I know that yoga can be dangerous--I really do! This is the MAIN reason that we as teachers at Tranquil Space preach "listening to your body" over and over again and offer so many modifications for each pose. I agree that this article brings up some very important points about yoga injuries and I think that anything that gets the yoga community talking about and debating the way that we practice is a good thing. However, I do have a few thoughts that I wanted to share, so I'm going to do that today in the form of a letter to the author. Please do share your thoughts, as well, and don't be afraid to disagree with me!
Dear William J. Broad and The New York Times, Although I truly do appreciate your publishing the article "How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body" both online and in the paper this past weekend, I wanted to add a few things that I feel were left out of the article--or at least not spelled out in a very transparent way--so that I can dispel some of the beliefs about yoga that I believe the normal, non-yogi public may have gleaned from reading this article. My humble thoughts on the subject are below:
As one of my teachers said about this article this past weekend, "what are we supposed to do now? Is sitting on the couch eating Cheetos better for us?" Sincerely, Mary Catherine Starr To my yogi readers or those who want to start a yoga practice but haven't yet, please don't let this article scare you away from yoga. Let it be a great reminder to all of us to LISTEN TO OUR BODIES and to find teachers and a yoga style that we trust and that works for our individual skeletons, musculature, past injuries, lifestyle, and minds--teachers who don't push us, styles of yoga that encourage compassion and mindfulness over competition and "going deeper," and studios that create a warm, welcoming environment that makes it okay to spend half of the class in child's pose if that is what feels right for you. Namaste! Mary Catherine |
HELLO!I'm Mary Catherine, a Cape Cod-based yoga teacher, painter, designer, writer, mom, and list-maker extraordinaire. My goal is to inspire you to start living a more creative, simple, joyful, + purposeful life.
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