05/14/10 by Vibhuti Jaya | chronicle | No Comments »
Herstory – Part 3
The year was 2003, and it was a year of challenge and trial (and also of friendship and triumph)! Some overwhelming life circumstances inspired me to accept a friend’s invitation to participate in a 200 hour yoga teacher training (YTT) program in a nearby city. I had long since fallen miserably away from my yoga practice, and I longed for something that would reconnect me to that sense of vitality, purpose and belonging. I had become utterly disenchanted with playing the gym rat, so I gave up on all the nutritional supplements and backed off from the zeal of my workouts. My cute little clothes were tightening and the numbers on the scale told the rest of that unforgiving story. I was gaining back The Weight"a measure of the heaviness of a person", and because of what was happening in my personal life, I felt depressed and paralyzed to do anything to stop it.
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05/10/10 by Vibhuti Jaya | blog | 4 Comments »
Shame"a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety". Shyness"implies a timid reserve and a shrinking from familiarity or contact with others; disposed to avoid a person or thing". These two share the opening consonants uttered by sound conscious librarians everywhere (shhhhh!), but that’s not all they share. Both my shame and my shyness are connected to hiding. They are each associated with an aversion to being seen. More dangerously, they both have the power to prevent me from showing up.
Shame is an intriguing phenomenon that plays a pretty big part in the negative body image/eating disorders/obesity arena. Body shame in particular connects us to a never-ending cycle of comparison, dissatisfaction, and often a relentless pursuit of the perfect"being entirely without fault or defect, flawelss" body ideal. Interestingly, it can also be a set-up for a vortex of depression"a psycho-emotional condition marked especially by sadness, inactivity, difficulty in thinking and concentration, a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal tendencies", binge-eating, self-loathing and then more depression. Read more →
