 I support and believe Christine Blasey Ford and I am in awe of her courage to come forward and speak her truth. It has not been an easy thing to do and she has re-lived her trauma and experienced more trauma. She has been sent death threats and has had to leave her home. I want her to know I honor her and her story and as a result felt compelled to write this. Since Christine has come forward with her story of being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh, there have been a lot of questions and comments. As a sexual assault survivor myself and a trauma therapist who has worked with dozens of sexual assault survivors, I would like to try and answer some of the questions that I have heard and even been asked directly. Question #1- Why didn’t she tell anyone at the time this incident occurred? She was 15 years old, scared and having a trauma reaction. Many assaults occur by people who are known to the victim. Sometimes the perpetrator threatens to harm the person if they tell anyone. Many young survivors are afraid if they tell a parent they will get in “trouble”. Many victims are blamed with statements such as “you shouldn’t have been at that party”, “you shouldn’t have been drinking”, “your flirting brought this on”, “the way you dressed caused this”, “he’s a good boy, you must be mistaken”, “you are a slut, whore, etc”. These are just a few of the things that are said to victims. Many victims/survivors are afraid no one will believe them. That was her worst fear coming forward now, I’m sure. Not only did many people not believe her, some people made death threats against her and her family. Now, wouldn’t that be a reason some people may not come forward? Secondly, a typical trauma reaction is to shut down and try and forget about what happened. But no one ever forgets. Sometimes the event is packed away in the recesses of the mind and resurfaces years later when current events occur that trigger the body and mind. I’ve personally had the experience of early childhood sexual abuse by a known perpetrator that I only remembered after undergoing somatic body work by a trusted friend. My body knew for a long time that something had occurred as I would have atypical reactions to hearing about childhood sexual abuse. For years I had suicidal thoughts and no idea where they were coming from. Once the memories surfaced, I was not surprised and it confirmed for me a lot of things I had felt over the years. My memories were validated by others in my family when I shared them. I went through some intense therapy for several years after this and to this day from time to time have to do some healing work. Since the “#Metoo” movement began, I and other survivors, have been triggered a lot. How do we speak our truth? Where do I speak my truth? Will speaking my truth help someone else? Will I make myself too vulnerable in speaking my truth? Will my family support me in speaking my truth? Question #2-One of the other questions people have had is “how can she be sure it was him?”, “maybe her memory is wrong." These incidents are recorded in the brain. When they occur with someone who is known to the victim, they remember who it was, the voice, the smell, the face, all of it. Sometimes, a survivor will dissociate during the incident, which is when the mind separates from the body as a way to cope and survive the trauma. However, the mind is still present and recording the experience. I have experienced other types of sexual assault. Once, three boys in the neighborhood dragged me into the woods with two of them holding my arms back and the other one fondling me. My “fight” response kicked in and I kicked the one touching me in the groin and was able to get away. I still remember his name and face. I never told anyone. This happened again with a few boys on the front lawn of his house. I remember who it was and I never told. Other incidents of boys grabbing my breasts, calling me names, smacking/pinching my rear end, all occurred multiple times. The only incident I ever told anyone about was when I was 15 years old: While riding my bike, a guy in a gold Camaro stopped and asked for directions. When I got closer to the car I saw he was masturbating. I took off on my bike and rode home with my heart pounding. I remembered the type of car, as it was distinctive. I told my mom and we did call the police to report what happened. I don’t know if he was ever caught. Of all the incidents I experienced, except for that one, I knew who the perpetrator was. Survivors remember, even when it is hard to acknowledge that it was someone known to them. Question # 3-Well….what is sexual assault really? As I’ve shared with my daughter, sexual assault can range from name calling, leering at a woman’s body and making sexual comments, to incest and rape. There are many types of assault under this umbrella, such as fondling, oral sex, forcing someone to watch porn and/or strip, etc. The primary elements are that it is unwanted, unsolicited, there is a power differential, and the victim feels extremely unsafe and threatened. I’ve had women share with me that their fathers, step-fathers, grandfathers, etc. have made sexual comments on their bodies, have looked them up and down and smiled, and have made sexual comments about other women in front of them, and all of this was unwanted, unsolicited, and made them feel extremely uncomfortable and threatened. This is sexual assault. I’ve had women share that they have been fondled over their clothes by uncles, step-fathers, brothers, cousins, neighbors, friends of parents, etc., and that is sexual assault. I’ve had women share that they have been sexually abused (fondled, raped, forced to do sexual acts while being watched, etc.) by fathers, mothers, grandparents, coaches, priests, ministers, boyfriends, husbands, teachers, etc., and that is sexual assault. Some of these incidents were one time and many of them continued over months and years. In the last year or so women and men are finding the courage to share their stories of sexual assault, abuse and trauma. This is the beginning of finding more ways to heal and hold perpetrators accountable. Education is key in changing the way people understand sexual abuse and trauma. We need more open dialogue on this and movement to change statute of limitations for survivors. I am using my voice and sharing my story for my own healing and in hopes that others will find the courage to share theirs as that is a big part of the healing process. Rita Lampe is a licensed clinical social worker working in a holistic therapy center where she is also able to provide Reiki and Energy Medicine sessions as part of her practice. She is a graduate of the EMDR therapy training program offered by the Institute for Creative Mindfulness.
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 I am 57, and I have been a yogi since age 43. I have been #metoo declarant since late 2017, a survivor of sexual abuse since the age of seven. I have been touched inappropriately by yoga teachers three times, twice triggering me and once physically injuring me. We need in the #metoo era—and yoga has its own #metoo—to admit to and fix a problem in our industry, and it is this: Yoga has become a touch culture. Let’s look at this problem and move towards solutions, and fast. I open with two encounters I had recently regarding yoga’s touch culture within my local yoga community. Last spring: Two students talk with me after class. They say they have completed a yoga teacher training program. They say they learned about adjustments and that their teacher taught them to touch lightly. “It’s more of an emotional adjustment we learned to do,” one says. Then they look at each other and, as though auditioning for Cats, turn toward one another, bend their elbows to their sides, curl their fingers into their palms, and paw each other’s arms, rolling out their mewing chant, “Kitten Pawwwzzz.” Four weeks later, I receive an email from a local yoga studio addressed to dozens of area instructors inviting us to play a role in our city’s large (2016 attendance: 1,900+) outdoor summer yoga class: “It is beautiful to witness all of the fantastic work you are doing sharing the magic of yoga in your classes and throughout your communities…Would you be willing to offer your hands-on support {at our upcoming event}? Assistants will be asked to arrive at 5:30pm to help manage and arrange mats and then share your loving heart through your hands.” (This event consisted of teachers adjusting and assisting en masse, including two of my students who, handicapped by outdoor acoustic challenges, were taken by surprise.) Yoga Touch: Background Yoga historian Mark Singleton has found almost no evidence of teachers adjusting/assisting students until the 1930s, with the Krishnamacharya lineage. Creation of modern yoga postures, documented to have gymnastics, bodybuilding, wrestling, and dance influences, was on the rise in this period, and the Krishnamacharya lineage was a prominent player. The practice of adjusting/assisting in this lineage advanced, naturally, as its postural collection (via Iyengar) and movement patterns (via Jois/Ashtanga) did. The combined innovation of what is taught and how it’s taught created a very large branch on today’s yoga family tree, for every Vinyasa Yoga style is born from Ashtanga, and Iyengar is a prominent global yoga style. Therefore, although some lineages are hands-off, mainstream, general yoga is a worldwide practice that utilizes what Krishnamacharya started: the touch factor. Today, yoga adjustments/assists are learned, and touch culture perpetuated, in four major ways: within a tradition (YTT and YT-CEU programs); from a teacher-student bond (‘My guru opened my heart chakra in Half Moon, so I do the same for others’); and casually in yoga’s open-source, observation field known as a general class (‘Today I saw this teacher do this amazing assist on a student in supine twist. I’m going to try that’). To a lesser degree, as well, the hands-on healing arts have played a role in advancing yoga’s touch culture. It is common, for example, for yoga instructors to be massage therapists, and they bring that license-to-touch into class. This multi-modality mash-up means yoga is morphing but also shines a negative light on our industry’s trouble with setting boundaries and limits. ‘What else (besides goats) can we add to yoga to make the yoga more? better? nuanced?’ worth more?’ Last, acrobatic and partner yogas contribute to touch prevalence and posture as a physical thing we do with others. Certified to Touch Whether it’s adjusting, assisting, or massaging, a 200-hour certificate is all that is required to grant yoga teachers a near-surreal amount of power: potential physical dominance over students’ bodies. Irrefutably, our industry’s self-sanctioned right to touch students is the same agency that allows us to injure and abuse them. Yoga Touch Crimes Injury and abuse are a definite and dark part of contemporary yoga history. One does not need to go far to learn facts: Yoga thought leader Matthew Remski’s crucial project, WAWADIA, consists of interviews, analysis, and reported findings of increased injury cases in our field. WAWADIA and his most recent work moving the conversation of yoga’s #metoo culture forward are mergeable studies and are bound to be yoga history classics. As well, impassioned yoga podcaster J. Brown aired this spring a series of interviews about yoga’s latest #metoo scandal, this one involving the Ashtanga lineage in general, Pattabhi Jois specifically. On May 14, Brown posted his interview with Remski. Guru status crashes (or lack thereof) occurring in the face of exposed abuse is not the only message Remski and Brown are sending. The difficult terrain we need to traverse in this troubled era is another. Against Reason That we touch students at all in the #metoo era defies reason. From current statistics put out by The National Sexual Violence Resource Center about childhood sexual abuse to the staggeringly high #metoo statistics of reported abuse in Hollywood, we must acknowledge that a large percentage of us are sexually harassed, assaulted, and/or abused in our lifetimes. Our industry’s touch culture runs exactly counter to what we know about the needs of #metoos and other trauma survivors, for touch is a complex issue and for some a serious one. What’s more, that we touch students at all when we know of the negative effects a teacher-induced injury can have on a student is an industry-wide fail. Why do we risk it? Allow the risk? Bodily harm, litigation, and poor reputation as a teacher and industry are risks our touch culture creates. Touch culture to the degree it has developed in mainstream yoga is disrespectful, dangerous, legally suspect, and far afield from where we should be in the #metoo era. Whatever cultural context inspired and advanced the touch culture in yoga from the last century to now, it no longer serves a large percentage of people. Slow to Take a Stand We are witnessing the very earliest attempts of a touch culture shift in the name of raised awareness, responding to yoga’s #metoo, and handling the touch factor in class. These barely scratch the surface of our problem; morphing and adjusting will be essential. First, showing promise is our rising awareness in yoga of human trauma. David Emerson and his mission of training in trauma-sensitive yoga through The Justice Resource Institute and the in-yoga and beyond-yoga fieldwork of psychologist Dr. Jamie Marich are two leaders who cast the welcomed lens on the victims/survivors who are taking our classes and on ourselves to be better informed. Mainstream yoga, though, is barely budging toward trauma competence, even though it is there where we need the biggest re-direct. Second, in February, Yoga Alliance responded to yoga’s #metoo by announcing its new role supporting the rights of all to practice yoga “free from abuse, harassment, and manipulation.” Its site’s new sexual misconduct resource pages and “#ahimsanow” call-to-action point to an admission of a problem. Yoga Alliance has no authority or resources to investigate or stop criminal activity, though; it remains a registration-based organization. What’s more, Yoga Alliance itself can accurately be called part of the problem: As an agency it approves, for training and then registry, many touch culture training programs and certified-to-touch teachers. Finally, the trending use of permission objects and gestures in yoga is an attempt to solve the problem of touch culture in the era of #metoo. However, permission objects and gestures merely divide classmates into two categories: those who grant permission to be touched and those who do not, whether for a pose, a class, or a lifetime. As Julie Kiger, owner of Portland Power Yoga, and other teachers like myself who have survived PTSD have reported and attest, students choosing touch or no-touch does not guarantee they are revealing what they really want or feel, especially those whose rights and voices have been silenced and compromised from harassment, assault, abuse, and other traumatic experiences. We need to remember that in general students want to do well in whatever realms they are studying. They might even want to please or avoid offending the teacher, which was my case for years in yoga, making opting out a very hard decision. Permission objects and gestures even when they work right (and I’ve seen teachers royally screw it up) create, instead of a student-empowering environment, a divisive classroom hierarchy and not a democracy (forcing avote rather than granting choice. Solutions Here are things we need to think about, talk about, and move to change when teaching mainstream yoga. Whoever you are—a teacher who touches students, a teacher who doesn’t, a student who loves touch, a student who doesn’t—I invite your stories, opinions, and input.
Yoga is a force, and it is complex. It can actually, alchemically, and (believers say) magically bring the body-mind complex, when given fair opportunity and good condition, to a better state simply from the acts of presence and practice. No matter how much yoga is going to have to morph in the #metoo era—no matter how strong our attachments to our current pictures of yoga in some lineages are—we must change, and soon. The good news is that true to its beautiful malleability as both the dancer and the danced of human psychology in the arena of culture, yoga can handle it. So can we. Our students deserve better, yoga deserves better, and we as professionals deserve better, too. Marcia Camino, Founder of Pink Lotus Yoga in Lakewood, Ohio, is a yoga teacher, trainer, speaker, and consultant and an Expressive Arts Consultant and Educator in training. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska/Fairbanks and a B.A. in English from Bowling Green State University.
Marcia has spoken and presented on a wide range of topics in yoga and expressive arts and has worked to establish or advance a yoga presence at several large local institutions. Her work in Expressive Arts brings her the opportunity to explore and share the connections between yoga and art, her favorite art form being poetry. She is a writer of prose and poetry and has completed three books: her studio’s yoga teacher training manual; Crayzee Aayzee (a poetry abecedarian); and Oomee Boomee (a three-book yoga adventure series for younger readers). In addition to her degrees, Marcia holds certifications in Dancing Mindfulness, Women CWRU Staff Leadership, General Yoga Teacher Training, Yin Yoga, Children’s Yoga, and children’s tutoring. She is currently on track to receive her REACE through mentoring with the Institute for Creative Mindfulness. |
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