Knowing My Limits

Comment now » // August 6th, 2009

There is no shortage of yoga studios here in Vancouver. They’re almost as prolific as coffee shops. I’m fortunate to live right beside a building that houses a yoga studio. I’ve practiced yoga off and on for years, but when the studio in the building beside my apartment building arrived I was thrilled. This particular studio teaches a variety of styles of yoga, and the classes are taught by a variety of teachers. I have found a teacher (Lesley Turenne) who I really like, and whose style of teaching is gentle and nurturing. Perfect for a cult survivor.

Earlier this year, on the May long weekend, Lesley and her sister hosted a yoga retreat in Squamish, a small town an hour’s drive from Vancouver. Lesley mentioned it to me a couple of months before the event and I was keen to go. The price was very affordable and I was interested to join other yoga students for three days of practice and meditation and healthy food.

As the time of the retreat got closer, I got more and more nervous about it, and finally decided that I couldn’t go. When Lesley asked me if I had registered I gave her a lame-ass excuse about not being able to get away that weekend (I think I mumbled something about having to work).

The truth was that I was afraid to attend. When it came down to it, I just didn’t feel safe being with 30 or 40 strangers (except for Lesley and a few others) in a situation where I was not in charge of the agenda and where we would be moving and acting as a group. It was a situation that reminded me too much of the week-long spiritual ‘workshops’ I’d had to endure with the cult I belonged to.

Not that the yoga retreat was a cult. Not at all! But the living situation was too reminiscent of what I’d been through in the past. I’ve learned to feel safe in some groups – I wrote a post about that recently – but other situations with groups continue to make me uncomfortable to the point that I can’t participate.

I feel sad and embarrassed that I didn’t tell Lesley the truth about why I couldn’t attend the retreat. I was afraid that saying, “I used to belong to a cult so going to a retreat feels dangerous to me,” would sound too dramatic. And I didn’t think quickly enough when Lesley asked me if I was registered to come up with a less-dramatic-sounding-but-still-truthful answer.

On the plus side, this experience made me realize that I have learned how to protect myself and not do those things that make me uncomfortable. I may not always do that in an elegant way, but I get it done. I have learned to trust myself and to not put myself in situations that I am (fairly or unfairly) uncomfortable with, and not feel I have to please other people by accepting every offer that comes my way.

These are skills I did not have when I was in the cult and I am very happy to have acquired them.