I am a huge advocate of modern yoga as you all know and am still after 24 years constantly navigating what yoga brings into my life, life in general and what is typically touted as yoga in our society. 

So I have started bringing group discussion/rants usually led by me into the beginning of class, and this week has really got me going. Led by the fact that my 10 o’clock appointment turned up at 8.50, ten minutes before class, leaving me such a short time to verbalise my massive complaint about the continued disservice that his company provides (trust me this is huge). So I entered class all fired up. We then discussed the topic of us being labelled ANGRY, even by ourselves. ANGRY defined by the fact that we speak our minds, stand up for ourselves and argue against bad treatment, injustice and poor service, often termed FEISTY in relation to women. Someone so rightly pointed out that if we were men, we would be titled ALPHA! 

We discussed how our weekly sessions dissipated our anger and how much we need them. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that physical yoga is the medium we love and the same would happen if we met for an hour of Scottish dancing, so don’t think that I buy into the magic powers of a yoga practice. We work long and hard at tying up all aspects of yoga to improve ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually but this is actualised off the mat, not on it. Now back to the point of this blog. I have always been outspoken and hopefully stood up for myself and others in the process, it is true that if I were male I would be ALPHA and referred to as having “a huge pair of balls” all of the macho nonsense that serves our patriarchal society, but I am not I am female, not an ANGRY female an ALPHA female. The same applies to my classmates.

In conclusion we must keep reminding ourselves that being ALPHA can be tiring for us and inconvenient for our audience/victims, but we should never have to apologise for standing up and speaking out. Rarely will people listen, accept or react to a quiet request in todays society so if we have to raise our voice, be consistently firm, drop the F bomb when needed; in fact whatever it takes to express the courage necessary to be heard – then so be it.

j a y n e

 

Jayne Nicholls

Jayne Nicholls, multi award winning owner and director of GXT.