Code Red by Lisa Lister
Author:Lisa Lister [Lisa Lister]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00
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YOGA WAS NOT DESIGNED WITH WOMEN IN MIND
So this is how it is: most of the yoga taught today was designed in medieval India, by men, for men. Those guys didn’t have menstrual cycles, or vulvas, or breasts, and not much in the way of backsides either, so all these aspects of us are often just inconveniences in most modern hatha yoga (yoga that works through the body to alter the mind). So when we follow yoga instructions intended for male bodies, we give away our power, because those instructions can fundamentally disrespect female bodies.
The disrespect is not simply because the poses we’re being asked to do disregard secondary sexual characteristics like buttocks and breasts. A deeper disempowerment occurs when we practice yoga according to instructions that disrespect our body’s menstrual cycle by following yoga programs that have no direct relation to our daily experience of our cycle.
It’s like this: hatha yoga manuals were composed by men and for men in India between the 11th and 15th centuries. Women appear in these texts, usually only as polluting forces to be avoided. Occasionally a yogi is required to find himself a woman to practice sexual yoga with, involving genital muscular contraction… but beyond that particular technical requirement for a vagina as a receptacle, women’s bodies are simply absent.
Think about it for just a minute…would were ally expect texts written anywhere in the world in 1450 to be anything other than totally clueless about women and our power?Just because yoga originated in India, and just because medieval Indian yogis were spiritually motivated, doesn’t mean that they had any real clue about women’s bodies, or about what is a suitable yoga practice for us now.
So although humans of any gender can do the medieval yoga practices, they are not intended for female bodies, and there are certainly no references to menstrual cycles.
I know from experience that honoring and respecting our cycles is a vital means to accessing our own inner guidance, and so it seems to me that most male-oriented approaches to yoga simply encourage women to ignore the inner wisdom that arises when we pay attention to our cycles.
Most traditional yoga schools absolutely discourage asking questions that might reveal a teacher’s disrespectful ignorance of women’s cycles. These yoga lineages can disempower individuals by valuing the teachings of the “lineage” way higher than any insights from self-discovery. In traditional yoga forms, we are not invited to honor the deep blood wisdom of our own bodies, for fear this might lead us to ask difficult questions of those who would like to be in charge of the wisdom for us…
Such disrespect for women’s bodies is surprising, given that yoga is rooted in a philosophy that reveres women and girls. In the Tantric prehistory of yoga, women were often the most powerful teachers, and our sexual energy was honored as a potent creative force. Tantra’s respect for female bodies is evident in fabulously body-positive Sanskrit terminology. For example, menstrual blood holds ritual significance, and yoni not only means vulva and vagina, but also “source of all power.
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