wombatgirl509

I’m writing to share my experience of challenging the Bikram orthodoxy on the issue of locked elbows in half moon. I practiced at a local studio for a month last summer, which was fine. Then I found hotyogadoctor.com and started practicing at home, which was great! One of the things I learned from you was this technique of relieving neck tension by de-prioritizing locked elbows.

Last week, it got too cold for me to practice at my house, so I returned to the local studio. Clash of the wills ensued! In my first class, the instructor (who is also the studio owner) singled me out to prompt me to lock my elbows in half moon. His tone sounded irritated, like he was angry with me for not working hard enough. I locked them briefly to try to get him off my back, planning to talk to him later.

After class, I told him about you and the theory behind the non-locked elbow. He said that you weren’t practicing true Bikram. Then he launched into a canned lecture (and I do mean lecture: he talked [em]at[/em] me, not [em]with[/em] me. He didn’t seem to listen to my concerns. Instead, he seemed to push the pause button on his lecture, waited for me to finish speaking, and then plowed on with his lecture.). He lectured me for a while about how “the yoga will fix your neck tension, because it fixes everything.” He said the neck tension is part of the yoga. What the heck? Bikram Choudhury wants me to have neck tension? I don’t go around wishing neck tension on him! However, at the end of the lecture, the owner agreed to quit prompting me to lock my elbows.

That agreement to live and let live lasted until. . . the next time I saw him at the studio! (Maybe I should be glad he didn’t call me at home to bug me.) During my first week back in the local studio, I started noticing tension & pain in my neck. I skipped yoga one day to go to the chiropractor, who corrected it in one session. My chiropractor agreed, “Back off the locked elbow.” The next day I returned to the studio. I didn’t lock my elbows. The studio owner pulled me aside after class to lecture me some more on how “the yoga will fix it.” (So much for his agreement to stop bugging me!) I recounted my experience with the chiropractor, explaining that if Bikram was causing a symptom that chiropractic care fixes, then I’m not interested in it. As usual, he appeared not to hear me. “The yoga will fix it, you have to let it fix it.” “Actually, I think the yoga [em]caused[/em] it.” No direct response to that; just more canned lecture.

Then I began getting really angry and anxious. Why did I have to fight so hard to defend my right not to injure myself? Why did I have to sit through all this lecturing? Why wouldn’t this guy listen to what I was saying?

The next time I returned to the studio, I resolved to tell the owner that I was not going to lock my elbows based simply on his say-so, and ask him to either stop bugging me about it or refund the remainder of my prepaid card. So I briefly recapped my experience with my chiropractor, acknowledged that I was not following the Bikram orthodoxy, and asked him if he could live with that. Surprise–he resumed his lecture. This time, he really seemed to be grasping at straws, babbling about how doctors sometimes tell their patients not to do Bikram because they have high blood pressure or other issues. I couldn’t see what that had to do with my specific case. THEN, and this [em]floored[/em] me, he beckoned to D, a student whom I had never seen before. “D here is a doctor,” he said. “Tell him what’s going on with your chiropractor. Let’s see what he thinks.” I turned to D and asked him in a wry, but not rude, tone, “Do you feel like mediating a dispute, or did you just come here to do a yoga class?” I felt so bad for him, with the owner attempting to triangulate him into a conflict. And I felt bad for me: this was not my doctor, he was a stranger—why would I disclose my medical problems to a stranger? And did the owner really think I’d value the opinion of a random doctor more than that of my chiropractor who knows me? It struck me as extremely unprofessional. D looked really uncomfortable, but the studio owner pressed him to talk about neck tension and chiropractic care.

I could see that the owner was not going to allow the conversation to end unless he felt like he had won; I could see that I would have to end it. I told him I had to leave. He said, “You have to do what you think is right. I am just trying to help because you asked my opinion. But I won’t bother you about this anymore. I want to see you get all the benefits, and I know that if you can just work through this tension blah blah blah.” I had two thoughts: 1.) When did I ask his opinion? All I did was state my reasons for not responding to prompts to lock my elbows. Further evidence that this person is not listening to me. 2.) If he’s not going to bother me about this anymore, why did he just resume lecturing me? I interrupted him to tell him I had to leave, and I walked away.

This studio owner seems like an angry narcissist. I feel like I am being used to meet his felt need for a passive audience, his felt need to be right, his felt need for control, and to insulate himself from the anxiety that would come from questioning his rigid and dogmatic mindset. “Your neck is supposed to hurt”—sheesh! I feel like I am back in Catholic school, trying to refute the doctrine of original sin—”you’re [em]supposed[/em] to feel bad because you were just [em]born[/em] bad.” I also feel like the school kids who get ground into burger in “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” from Pink Floyd’s [em]The Wall[/em]. I don’t come to class to feel like a shamed and dehumanized school kid. Gabrielle, I love your emphasis on the principle of nonviolence. I am so glad that there is a humanist hot yoga mentor like you out there.