To yoga class or not to yoga class: on setting standards for ourselves
We're not forced to accept what we're offered. Especially, when we're offered something that doesn't align with how much we value what we have to offer.
This is the Next: the Newsletter, the weekly newsletter that mixes personal essays and social critique, and, where I, inspired by literature, psychology, and all my spiritual practices, attempt to make meaning out of what happens: to me, and to us all.
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Word has gotten around in my village that I give yoga classes, and that they are good. It has taken me about seven years between training as a yoga teacher and having a regular class of students (I held a weekly class in Oslo for a year, but most times, it was me and my one very dear, very committed student, whom I miss dearly). And now wannabe students are going around asking my guitar teacher (think, very small town vibe!) when I’ll be ready to expand my classes, and welcome more students.
So, I gave that possibility a chance and went to see a room I could potentially hold the classes in. I was told I could meet a rep of the local association at a local café, known for its jam sessions and musician-friendly vibe. The rep of the association, we’ll call him Mike, was, in fact, the café/bar’s owner, whose wife and two kids—two girls who couldn’t be more than four—were sitting at one of the tables eating fruit, the bar being otherwise empty.
It struck me that my only motivation for considering the extra classes to begin with was not even money: it was that people were asking for them. And when others ask, you must give, right?
“Let’s go see the room,” he told me, “this way,” he pointed.
We walked and talked—mostly about what the association does or doesn’t, how it’s structured and so forth—past the cemetery and the church, and on, towards the local pharmacy. The night sky was turning dark, but the details of the houses we walked by—stone houses, as per the local customs—were still visible, most things appearing at once clear and visible, but somehow disguised.
The association’s building, from the outside, looked white and unremarkable.
My host opened the door into a large room, with a stage, a sign to the left saying “bathroom”, and a bar corner by the right side of the door. The room had a white, tile floor (not ideal) and looked a bit disheveled, with tables left around, the chairs poorly arranged, and bits and pieces of what might have been paper or plastic dotting the floor of the stage. There was a glass panel behind the stage, and another tiny window on the right side, a sure sign that the building wouldn’t get much natural light even at the height of the day.
It was a place that so badly wanted to scream “potential,” but alas, it didn’t.
I asked a few questions.
“Could I teach from the stage, if I wanted to? That way people could see me better,”
“Sure,” Mike said, and showed me the staircase that led up to the stage, from which the imagined students I made up in my mind seemed small. Very small.
A few more questions later, and we were back to the café. By this point I’d learned the association expected to be paid 3€ per student per month, to pay for electricity, and something else, though honestly, I wonder what.
Not that 3€ per student per month is a lot. But it gave me pause when the rep’s wife said, “the previous teacher charged 12€. Per month.” She said it offhandedly, like she was just giving me some straight off the bat info. She said it, in fact, in the same tone that she suggested I shouldn’t give the classes on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, which is when the local council offers fitness classes (though no yoga), and in the same tone she used to tell me that the classes should be in the morning, so that she could attend. “But of course,” she kept saying, “it’s up to you.”
Except that it didn’t feel like it was up to me at all. I felt that this woman said “it’s up to you” in the way my mother sometimes does, indicating that I have a choice, but making it clear that the good, the moral choice, is somehow pre-written, and she holds it, she holds it in her hands, and it’s just “up to me” to see that’s how it is.
I could feel my hair almost clouding my face as the woman said that, my winter beanie suddenly too heavy, the night now fully somber and dark. I wanted to leave. I wanted to point the finger and tell her, “you have no idea who you’re talking to,” (yes, I have such a voice inside of me. I don’t love it, but…) thinking of all those expensive classes and all the world-famous yoga teachers I have trained with. But I didn’t say that. What would be the use? I felt this woman lacked decency, or insight. I wondered if she was trying to get away with a bargain, or if she truly felt she was just giving out facts.
“I mean, why would you do this?” my boyfriend asked, once we sat in our car and started driving home.
“It would help us pay the rent,” I said, feeling degraded, and yet, finding I couldn’t stop thinking about the extra income… and that was even as I kept telling myself I have a substantial amount of savings, and clients, and marketable skills that actually pay far, far more than that.
I saw then that we were cruising past The House. This is a house that has recently been built in our area, of the kind that look eco-friendly and modern, with glass walls and wooden touches. It is, truth be told, smaller than the house of my dreams, but still way bigger than the one I inhabit now. And as we sped past, I saw its lights were on. It looked cozy. But I thought, as I always do, that it does not have our views. From our tiny, rented, cute cottage, we see the ocean, the perspective stretching past our window and out our living room so wide and so abundant in depth, I cannot imagine going back to a place where all you see in front of your house is the wall of another.
I understood then, that when it came to the yoga classes, all I needed was a better view (friendly word of advice: if you find yourself stuck in some way, find yourself a wider, better, larger, deeper view).
Why would I give the classes? It struck me that my only motivation for considering the extra classes to begin with was not even money: it was that people were asking for them. And when others ask, you must give, right?
No.
Parentified children turn into adults that feel they need to run to the rescue and fix things for others just at the snap of others’ fingers, often at the cost and detriment of their wellbeing and health. We have learned that our value comes from offering that which is asked of us, and that, when asked, we must step in and perform.
As I have written about elsewhere, I was a parentified child. From my early childhood, I learned that it was best to suppress what I felt, lest my mother be distressed. When my parents had arguments, my mother would call me into her room and tell me all the ways my dad was failing her, and all she wanted to hear was that she was right. So, I told her so, unconditionally. I felt that to tell her they were right was one of the highest forms of love I could offer, and that it made me important. I alone, her daughter, could tend to my mother’s needs, I alone could be understanding, and sensible.
But of course, I didn’t just do that with her. She was right, but when my dad told me his version of the story, he was right, too. And my friend at school, who just wanted someone who would listen. And on and on, until the people in my town who are asking for yoga classes. At 15€ a month minus 3€. They are right, too. Aren’t they?
Parentified children turn into adults that feel they need to run to the rescue and fix things for others just at the snap of others’ fingers, often at the cost and detriment of their wellbeing and health. We have learned that our value comes from offering that which is asked of us, and that, when asked, we must step in and perform. Of course, the extent to which this is enacted varies from person to person. In my case, I am very responsive to people asking for me to be understanding, but I am really stern when it comes to other boundaries: I won’t eat something if I don’t want to, no matter how happy it’d make you. And no, I won’t come for a visit if I don’t feel like it, or go on holiday with you if I have other plans. But ask me when I am a bit fragile, a bit unsure, and my inner child will jump at the option of turning herself into “the good child.”
The good child, ladies and gentlemen of this newsletter, is a scam.
It assumes that to be good, and to do “right” is to give and give and give irrespective of what we really feel and sense. Thus, I have said yes to things I later had to turn around and say no to more times than I can count.
The good child assumes that the resentment that comes from saying yes to everything and going the extra mile to please one person or a community, or even everyone, is a small price to pay, as long as it means we’ll be appreciated, and loved. But it also assumes that what others can give us or demand of us is what we should take and accept, graciously, demanding nothing else.
In any transaction, though, there’s an exchange, and thus, a relationship.
If I offer you value (a yoga class) in exchange for money, the money that you’re offering me is more than just payment, particularly when you’re so bold as to state how much it is worth to you.
Because, as Per Espen Stoknes has written in Money and Soul, money is something other than a unit of value. Money, he writes, commands attention. To admit that to you (I mean the lady I talked about above, of course), four yoga classes a month are worth 12€, is to admit you don’t value those classes much at all. That has nothing to do with me and my yoga classes, and everything to do with you and the value you give to the various things you invest in, in your life.
And yet, the temptation or willingness to accept the low value you’re offering me as my value, that’s on me. Parentified or not, when I am offered a given deal—which always speak to the attention that’s being paid to what I have to offer and to me as a person—it’s up to me to accept it or reject it.
And the same applies in relationship. We all know that money, aside from being a store of value, a means of exchange, and a unit of account, also frames relationship in hierarchical ways. We understand that the person paying, usually, has the cards stacked in their favor, while the person who receives is subordinate. To enter into a transaction is to enter a relationship, and that relationship can be unequal in some form or shape.
But that is the thing. We do not have to enter the relationship.
As someone born in middle class, not high middle class, I have received, as most of us, conflicting messages about this particular point. I’ve been told more than once that when money was offered, I should be gracious and say thank you.
The caveat, though, lies in that the mere fact that something is offered, doesn’t mean I should accept it, nor does it mean that which is being offered is enough for me, or good for me, or something I should be thankful for. But when I act out of the desire to be the “good one” I might totally forget what I deserve to say “yes” or “no” to, in favor of that which I’m being offered.
For so long, in my relationship with my mother, and with others, I thought that I had to accept crumbles of love as the most worthy of things. Trained to be understanding, I made the mistake of believing that accepting that which was subpar (bullying instead of friendship, for instance, or insults instead of kind words) was laudable, honorable even. But there is nothing honorable in foregoing that which we so deeply need for our soul to really shine a light on the world.
There is nothing honorable, in other words, in being “right” or in being “the good one.”
What’s honorable, instead, might be to recognize that we want value to be given. To everything: to yoga classes, and manual labor, to love and a listening ear, to a leaf that’s falling from a tree and to a flower that’s blossoming, to old ladies and young children, and young puppies and old cats, to entrepreneurship and art, but also, and crucially, to the acts of care and compassion, to the work of cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, to the small acts that are so often hidden in the dark.
And if we want value to be given, what we must give value to, first of all, is ourselves.
Lifting ourselves up to a larger, bigger, deeper view, where we can see the darkness as training, and the light, as the path to follow.