Against The Body-Hating Group Meditation Delusion Conspiracy
toward an innately self-celebrating gaze
I’ve been experimenting with in person workout classes lately. It feels very funny to me, like a skit I’m doing. Like I’m entering a different world, where I don’t really belong, and it’s weird and funny. Sometimes it’s depressing.
My beef is the lack of joy. The obsession with the body as a thing to be sculpted and managed and controlled. It’s like how we try to do most things in this culture, usa, west, bay area, white, not sure all the buckets to include but you probably get it. Obvs diet culture but diet culture as overlapping with all the other cultures which cultivate the delusion that we are not going to die and we are not aging and we are not even really human. That we are machine-ify-able.
I know I am getting into diet culture overlap when I go to most workout classes. Aannndddd, I have really been craving that top 40 pop group sweat energy you know?! So I’ve been braving some workout classes.
It doesn’t feel like the vibe is about joy at all. It feels like the vibe is about how do I get my body to conform to an appearance that will get me more in life. And that is real. That desire, that need, to belong, and to be accepted, and to have cultural capital so that our lives can be easier / safer / better. I feel that! Personally, right now, in my own aging and increasingly-”irrelevant” body. It’s very compelling. But even if achieved—only temporary. I’m pretty sure it’s a hungry ghost situation.
I’ve only been to a few of these classes recently and the teacher makes a big difference. If the teacher (like in any discipline) has some joy about what they are doing it is a vibe I can ride.
One of my new perspectives on entering a workout class is awe. Awe that the conditions have aligned that my kids are old enough, I have slept enough, we are all not-sick enough, childcare is reliable enough, that I can attend the class at all. The deliciousness of time for a workout class is something I completely took for granted before I had kids. Truly a long list of astounding conditions and humans’ labor aligned for this to take place, to be able to attend to my body in this way.
The other awe I am experiencing is wow I cannot believe my body is doing some of these things. I can’t believe my c-section scar has healed enough that I can use my abdomen more than I have in 6 years. I can’t do all the things in the class but I can do some of them and this is another miracle of aligned conditions. All of the years of energy and love that were poured into my body by my parents and caregivers throughout my childhood, all of the species who have fed me with their lives, the various systems of my body mysteriously (nature=god) working in concert to be able to notice and marvel at and move my oblique muscles, for example.
Another layer of what is going on in my workout class is critiquing of my body’s appearance in the mirror. And the vibe feels like that is the more predominant thought in the room.
So my fantasy is that my awe is more prominent than my critique. Therefore my practice is to follow the awe train of thought more often than the critique train of thought. Because what train of thought is less traveled? What train of thought might lead me to new places? I know the train of thought called critiquing my body. It’s a frequent one, and it’s boring as hell. It’s also riding a group meditation I want to avoid on behalf of myself and also on behalf of every other person on the planet. (Discerning which trains of thought I follow is also part of my service work to all whom I owe my existence.) Like Miranda Mellis says, what is the more interesting train of thought? That’s where I want to go. Awe is the more interesting train of thought. And I argue it’s truer in this case. So much more is working than not working. And there’s also the physics of: much less works in my body when I’m critiquing it.
When I’m forgetting that it’s anything other than a miracle that my body is moving in such a way, I’ve lost the plot. And that plot-loss is the body-hating group meditation delusion conspiracy we’re in. It’s a delusion that takes me away from everything that makes life rich and beaming and worth living. It’s also a conspiracy that drains so much energy away from contributing with love and awe toward what might support more love and awe.
My fantasy is that I remember more to orient to how it feels over how it looks. Not that how it looks is not important - I think it is at some level! Beauty! But whose gaze is evaluating how it looks? Is it truly my gaze or my unconsciously inherited gaze? (My two year old posed for a photo recently, wearing only her undies and her new sneakers and her move was to stick out her belly toward the camera first. As if to say, look how good I look! That’s a great example the kind of un-inherited, innately self-celebrating gaze I am interested in.) Am I looking at myself with the gaze of my exhaustion, my fear, imaginary others? Or with the gaze from the part of me that knows we are all a part of god and so to encounter our bodies at all is to encounter beauty? Or is it the part that has squeezed “beauty” down into only products I must buy to achieve it?
If the look of it must come at some expense to how it feels then it’s not the kind of beauty I am interested in. It’s got to feel good on the inside first, because when I am asking that question of my life - how does this feel inside me? - that is helping direct me toward the values I want to live. And when it doesn’t feel good that is a cue that I’m dropping into that group meditation of body-hating again, and my body is too much of a goddamn miracle to hate.
My fantasy is that the language of the workout teachers is not only “neutral” as in not talking about weight loss, dieting, etc, but is more awe-based. Less you-can-fight-your-way-through-this-workout-to-achieve-perfection and more you-are-already-doing-a-miraculous-beautiful-thing, which is to move your body in cool new and old shapes because you can, because it feels so good to see what your body can do, because it’s an affirmation of life and possibility, because it’s fucking fun.
I know there are many workout teachers doing some of this amazing work already and I THANK YOU. (Two great online examples if you need them are Kara Duval - I am down with someone who says “let’s move more like earthworms.” Also Lauren Leavell!) If anyone in San Francisco knows of in person workout teachers bringing forward the awe - hit me up!
And! I owe so so much of this thinking—any of the parts of it that might be supportive—to my friend Virgie Tovar’s beaming bright mind-heart! Please if somehow you don’t know her work, get to it.
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And either way / anyway - if you are needing to cultivate awe - astrology readings are my main offering in which we actively look at your particular astrological season and say: wow, what a miracle your life is, right now, no matter what is happening in it. The stars help a lot in reminding us of that, if we’re curious and humble enough to ask. Here’s the rest of my May spots. I’ll be away some in June so if you are feeling the call for soon now is a good time.
Either way / anyway may you be in awe at the existence and magic tricks of your body today,
Sarah