"That's where the good stuff is"

About a month ago I made the epic pilgrimage home from west los angeles to spend the summer in the suburban paradise of Carmichael, California, population: mostly middle to upper middle class white people: claim to fame: the least known adjacent city to the illustrious state capital. Carmichael is one of those places that lingers three to five years behind the evolution of popular culture, marked by radio stations that play retired top 40 hits and clothing stores that market fashion trends featured four seasons ago on The Real World. Needless to say, my addiction to the southern california phenomenon of power yoga has remained unsatiated since my triumphant return to protected left turns, wide streets and well-defined sidewalks.

Eager to reimmerse myself in my workout ritual and desperate to find a substitute for the practice to which my devotion has become borderline religious, I fired up the stolen wireless internet (one of the privileges of a technologically underdeveloped society is the absence of password protected networks) and set out in the direction of a google search. Four rounds of word order manipulation revealed a vinyasa flow yoga studio in Sacramento's wanna-be-urban midtown district. I was sure my well-articulated, non-western prayers had been answered and Shiva had shined upon my pathetic hometown existence to reveal the source of my suburban salvation.

The good news is, the power yoga studio was not just a northern california urban legend, but rather a unique and inviting space owned and opertaed by an energetic yoga enthusiast slash large dog owner who seemed to be an ideal combination of down-to-earth sacramenton and experienced instructor. The bad news is: while both of those things may be true, the practice she led that evening became the inspiration for this entire entry, and if you read anything I've ever written you know that can't be good.

Somewhere between the intricate interpretations of the standard poses I know, love and count on for both challenge and familiarty; the yoga instructor launched into a predictable life lesson connecting the work on the mat to the work we do every day in the world beyond it. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth breathe of an unusual and awkward contortion, she began encouraging us to endure the pose through the pain. It's not an uncommon mantra to hear in a yoga studio, a spiritual space for opening your body, mind and heart which sometimes requires maintaining focus and serenity through discomfort; but the daily-life analogy that accompanied it nearly collapsed my down-dog.

"Yoga is just like a relationship, you have to stick it out through the pain and discomfort, because that's where the good stuff is." There she was. Not just a character in a poorly written sitcom or romantic comedy, but a real live, talking, walking, thinking woman, telling her captive audience of (primarily) female yogis to stay in relationships that are painful, destructive and/or dysfunctional; not just because she's optimistic or hopeful for improvement, but because that is where the greatest meaning and depth of it exist. Are you kidding me?

As I drove away from the studio that night (appalled and offended) it occured to me that the take home message of the evening was not just the advice of an overly-organic, new age, chanting pseudo-spiritual yoga instructor, but rather a legitimate product of the conglomerate image-ideal-belief system that women grow up with about their orientation to the people they are in relationships with and the relationships themselves. The values of patience and compassion are revered as virtues of women who are self-sacrificing, devoted and unconditionally loving. Women learn that their own worth is measured by what they contribute to the lives of others at an early age girls develop the impulse to put themselves at the bottom of their emotional investment hierarchy.

So here we are. Grown up women, products of exposure to fairy tales, disney movies and countless other academic and media-based lessons about the roles females play in all types of human interaction, who have been imprinted with the some interpretation of exactly what that yoga instructor was talking about: that while we may be exploited, disrespected, abandoned, cheated on, derided, marginalized and otherwise demoralized by the people we choose to be in relationships with, the appropriate, heroic, selfless response to all of it is to keep loving, keep working, keep adjusting because ultimately that is what makes the relationship worthwhile.

Being a daughter of this phenomenon, and a weathered soldier of far too many battles to save a relationship that wasn't working, I wonder how it is that although countless generations of women have undoubtedly endured painful relationships with fruitless results, we are still without a prevailing alternative wisdom that suggests relationships that are painful should be terminated immediately.

The most severe and haunting element of this entire discussion is the depth and breadth of the consequences that accompany relationship endurance. Aside from the (in some cases) permanent emotional scars, remnants of bad relationships leave traces of behavioral patterns, professional distractions, not to mention self-image and self-respect distortions that can potentially leave women hollow, defeated and emotionally raw. Even worse than any of this is the weight beared by women who refuse to give up on the pursuit of "the good stuff" even when what they see, feel and experience is unequivocally bad. These are the real victims of the ideology that emerges from the classic tale of Beauty and the Beast. Some women wait an entire lifetime to reveal their charming prince, with persistent devotion to both the idea of commitment and the person they are committed to.

It terrifies me to think that anyone is existing under the assumption that staying in a relationship through heartbreak and discomfort is not only one way, but the only way, to get to the place where the relationship really happens. I envision a world where women get into relationships because they are healthy and fulfilling and get out of them as soon as they fail to live up to that standard. I write fairy tales and children's books in my head that cast brilliant young women as heroines and detail stories of independence, self-respect and male characters who are unconditional, sacrificing and compassionate. Until we live in a world where narratives of this sort thrive in the media, I leave women with advice I got in a santa monica yoga class, from a woman who teaches yoga as well as she teaches life.

Ally told a story one night while we were sitting in a deep hip opener pose about leaving the man of her dreams after she witnessed him swipe a block of cheese from a whole foods without paying for it. She said, "the truth is, that was one of many red flags I didn't take heed of throughout our relationship" She continued, "the beauty of yoga is that you get to know yourself so well that you're capable of getting out of something at the first sign that it isn't working for you"
And Ally is most definitely right, your most intimate relationship is knowing the depths of yourself, because that's where the good stuff is