You tell me to listen to my body, but what you mean is “listen to me. I know better than you.”

You tell me to just “be myself” but what you mean is: be the person I want you to be. Be the person I expect you to be. Oh– and don’t change.

Two teachings I think of all the time came from the mysore room. Ashtanga jedi anatomy guru David Keil, upon seeing me try to wrench my leg behind my head in a way I had seen a woman with an entirely different body once do, stopped me. That way wasn’t going to work for someone with long limbs and a short torso, like me. He said:

“how bout you be you?”

And then David Garrigues, I love the way he says:

“it’s all about the set up.”

Being me and working the set up: Both are easier to achieve on the mat. I feel most free— most me— on the mat. I feel best able to work the set up when it comes to poses.

It’s life where I run into trouble.

Perhaps now that yoga has given me peace with my body, now it is daring me to make peace with me. Maybe is it taunting me to work the set up inside.

Beacuse I look around and feel ill of pretending, of being appropriate, behaving, of denying the obvious elephants in every goddman room, of small talk, of the bright happy online posts about “shining your light” and being “vibrant” and “raising your vibration” and making 2016 the year we fully “rockstar” it out and I become, at long last, the bestest and me-est me that ever was!! (sign up now; registration closes in two days!!)

It makes me ill, because l know the only light you want me to shine is the one you want to see — the one that makes you comfortable and the one that validates the world as you play it. The one that maintains the status quo.

And I look at the problems in this world and I feel helpless because the set up, the way way back before the before set up, is all messed up. I’d like to take all the power structures and burn them to the ground. I’d like to flip the set up that makes the “male” the gold standard. I’d love to raise my kid with some sense of spirituality but show me an organized religion that isn’t built on maintaining its own power, teaching people they need something they don’t have, and that keeps women down and worse, fucks us over.

I wish I could see who I am really, who am I without all that was put upon me. I wish I could free everyone from the cages of conformity and normality, but then again, I’m still in shackles myself.

I take some comfort in seeing progress grow from small, barely visible movements on my mat; maybe there is a way out of all this muck. Maybe all I can do is start.

I wish especially to liberate women from the bullshit stories we’ve been told for so long.

I wish that being moral wasn’t considered the same as being conventionally appropriate and wholesome.

I wish that being an adult, married and a mother wasn’t considered the same as being dead.

Maybe it’s time I stopped asking for permission.

Face it:  when you tell me to “listen to my body,” when you tell me to just “be myself”—

you’re lying.