Yogis Anonymous

How’s the Water?

Everything all at once seems to be a theme right now (and maybe always). The excitement of reopening along with the anxiety. The prospect of being out in the world together in a carefree way, and the heartache of two mass shootings the first week we’re semi-open. Taking my daughter to school for an in-person tour, but realizing on the way I haven’t dropped her off anywhere and then left…for a year! Watching her stand on line 6 feet from the person in front of her and behind her, double-masked so I can’t tell if she’s okay. Finding out later she had a great time.

The heart of the yoga practice is quieting the mind so we can find steadiness. Learning how to calm ourselves and open our hearts in an uncertain world so we can show up with love in the face of fear. And looking reality square in the face so we can deal with it honestly.

We’ve been through so much this last year – along with the pandemic we’ve had an opportunity to get real about systemic racism. The utter devastation of George Floyd’s murder and the absolute truth that mothers of Black boys have to have conversations with their fourteen-year-old sons that I do not have to have with mine. I think racism is learned, I don’t think it’s natural to us. But not being a racist isn’t enough. We all have to get busy being anti-racist. It’s sad we have to work at something that ought to be obvious, but when we’re all growing up in a system that celebrates whiteness, this becomes the work.

It reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s opening to his famous commencement speech. Two young fish are swimming along and they pass an older fish. He says, “Hi boys, how’s the water?” And they swim on and one turns to the other and says, “What’s water?” You don’t notice injustice if it isn’t being directed at you.

Please join me and the amazing Leah Kim (@leahkimyoga) for an open, honest conversation about racism, anti-Asian violence and how we can support the AAPI community and all communities who need our commitment to make “the water” safe for everyone.

Tuesday, March 30th at 5:30pm PST on the Yogis Anonymous Instagram page

I’d love to see you there for the kind of conversation I feel certain we all need to be having.

Sending love to all,

Ally Hamilton Hewitt

The Veil of Silence is Now on Fire

I posted something on one of my Facebook pages the other day about why it is young women and girls who are sexually assaulted often do not tell their parents, file a police report, or go to the doctor. I don’t feel like re-posting here, but I’m speaking from my own personal experience. A woman commented with “Mothers, teach your daughters well,” and I believe she meant well, but this is a HUGE part of the problem. The onus should not be on women and girls to do whatever they can to keep themselves safe at all times; are we really consenting to living life on the defensive, in a constant state of hyper-alertness?! It is not just about mothers teaching their daughters well. Fathers need to model respectful behavior and think carefully about the things they say and do, and the way they treat the women in their lives, because children watch and absorb EVERYTHING. Both parents of both genders need to teach their daughters and their sons well.

I have a son and a daughter. My son is almost 12, and although he is not yet at the age and stage where this is a current issue, he already understands a girl’s body is her own and we have had frank conversations about consent. I’m talking to him about this (and have for some time) not just because I want him to be a good man, but also for his own protection. He knows when he goes out in the world he is to treat the girls and women he encounters the same way he’d want his little sister and his mother to be treated. We need to be raising better men. “Boys will be boys” is an outdated mantra that does a disservice to boys and men everywhere, and perpetuates an awful cycle for women and girls. If you are a good man (and thankfully, I know many good men), please think carefully about ideas you may have absorbed from our culture and consider whether you may be contributing to these problems in any way, without feeling ashamed about it. Our society has taught us all kinds of things that are not true, and we are all influenced by our environment. Some things just need to be unlearned.

If you’re looking for concrete ways to help, here are just a few ideas:

– Don’t participate in “locker room talk”, and if you are present when someone else is speaking disrespectfully about women, call it out. Real men don’t talk about women like they’re objects.

– Don’t tell sexist “jokes” and don’t laugh at them, either. It’s okay to say, “Hey man, I just don’t find that funny.”

– If you don’t want the government to tell you what you can and can’t do with your body, don’t vote for people who want to tell women what they can and can’t do with theirs. This isn’t about being pro-choice or pro-life, it’s about the government making laws about what individual women can do with their bodies. Try to separate those issues.

– Ask the particular women in your life if or how you can help.

Not long ago, both of my kids ate up the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series by Jeff Kinney. They were so into those books, I took them to a book signing when Mr. Kinney came to town. When the movies started coming out, my kids were thrilled. I remember sitting and watching the first one with them, and how disappointed I was when the main character mentioned to a friend that one of the girls in class looked “hot.” I had to pause the film and talk to both my son and daughter about how comments like that reinforce the idea that a girl’s value is based on her appearance, and how wrong that is. Jeff Kinney seems like a really great guy. I don’t know him personally, of course, but his talk was great and he seemed truly thrilled to be there with tons of kids, talking and signing books. I was so disturbed by this line in the movie, that I went to see if he had written the screenplay, but he didn’t. He did, however, have a lot of power: “I worked with both sets of writers and the producers and attended all of the writers’ meetings and provided notes on all of the scripts,” he said. “I also contributed some jokes and dialogue. I didn’t have approval over the final script but I did approve the basic story that was told.” I have to believe if Mr. Kinney had stated clearly in his contract that he did not want any girls or women objectified in these films, he could have flexed his power and gotten that clause approved. After all, it’s his property. This is what I’m talking about — if you are a good man and you are targeting children as your main audience, then use your power and do some good.

Women are not fragile, we are strong but we are tired. You would be, too. We don’t need your protection, we don’t need a knight in shining armor to rescue us or save the day, we just need respect and understanding, and we need you in this fight with us, this is no time to sit on the sidelines.

Sending love to everyone,

Ally Hamilton

Let’s Get it Together

Yesterday as I walked out of a grocery store carrying a case of coconut water to my car, two guys on the street passed me, and as they walked away, one of them turned around and said over his shoulder, “Great ass”, and his buddy said, “Damn, girl.” I was immediately thrown into a state of conflicting feelings about this: part of me wanted to laugh, because really? I’m not a girl, I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m a yoga teacher and a writer and a business owner, and these two guys just treated me like a piece of meat. Another part of me felt enraged and frustrated. That’s a compliment, right? These guys thought that what they said was going to make me feel good. I’m supposed to enjoy the fact that someone thinks I have a great ass, but I’ve also just been casually reduced to a body part. This is so acceptable in our society, I’m expected to blow it off if I don’t like it, roll my eyes or shake my head and go on about my day as if it isn’t a big deal to be stripped of what makes me, me, by two complete strangers. That’s what my daughter is supposed to do one day, too.

I grew up with a dad who loved women and struggled with fidelity. He especially loved tall thin women with big boobs and tight butts, and long flowing hair. I met so many of my dad’s “women friends” growing up, the mind boggles, but I came to understand from him that most of the value of a woman had to do with how she looked. I don’t think he meant to teach me this. He always encouraged my writing and reading and creativity, so it wasn’t that he didn’t like smart women, because he did, but on the street his head would turn, or he’d point out some feature he really liked about this one going by, or that one over there, and as his daughter I got lessons in his preferences like I was his wingman. I also saw the way men looked at my mother as I grew up. She’s very attractive and never had trouble turning heads, and that seemed to give her some power. When we diminish women this way, and when we, as women, buy into this idea, we do a disservice to both genders. We also have a whole bunch of people who are transgender, or don’t relate fully to either gender. The way we think about roles is really outdated.

Last week I took my kids to meet friends of ours at a sushi place on Main Street. We like avocado rolls, so sushi restaurants are usually a good bet. When we got to the place, though, there were 3 big-screen televisions on the walls. In the chaos of sitting down and getting settled, I wasn’t paying attention to what was on the screens, but after we’d figured out who was sitting where and ordered, I noticed my daughter, who’s five, looking up at the television facing us. On it, were very young Japanese girls in tiny shorts and skirts, and little midriff tops, gyrating, and playing with their hair, and blowing kisses to pop songs. If it was just me, I’d shrug it off and not look, but I don’t want her taking that in. Not at five, and not ever. I leaned over and said, “You don’t need to look at that. Those are just girls who think they have to dress that way and dance that way so people will like them. They’re confused.“ I told her the conversation we were having with our friends was a lot more interesting. Then I look across the table, and see my son staring at the screen behind me. I turn to look, and it’s a beer commercial, with a girl with her boobs sticking out. I told my son he didn’t need to be watching that, either. It turned out it was a football game. I look to my left, because I’m hoping for National Geographic or something. My kids don’t get much television time. A few shows that are educational and cool, but that’s about it. So of course it’s enticing to be in a place with three huge screens. On the third screen, I kid you not, is “Shark Week.” It happens to be an episode about a rescue mission to save people who were on a boat that capsized near a hungry shark. The shark started eating people, and they had this on film, and I thought, things are bad when there are three choices, and I’d pick having my kids watch people getting eaten by sharks. We ate our rolls and got out of there, and won’t be going back.

Here’s the thing. Nothing is black and white in life. We all have our masculine and feminine sides, and we are beautifully different, but completely equal. We balance each other out. When you get too much testosterone in the mix, and not enough estrogen, I’m sorry, but things start to explode. We start shooting things up. We need each other. We need the action and the fire and the strength to get things done, and we need to be able to be soft. We need to be brave enough to be soft.

We’re training our boys, who turn into our men, to think of women as pretty objects, to separate them into different body parts. “Nice ass”, “great tits”, “long legs.” We’re visual beings. Women are, too. “OMG, that guy is so HOT.” It’s just, as a society, we’re taught to think of men as virile and powerful, so even if you try to reduce a man to the sum of his parts (and I hope you don’t), those parts are still holding the cards. When we, as women, dress ourselves in tiny skirts and push-up bras, what we’re saying to men is, “I know you can only really think with your small head.” We need women who are not spending the vast majority of their time and energy obsessing over how they look or what they weigh. If you see a woman, and you think, “Great ass”, I hope you immediately remind yourself that she’s a human being with an interior world you know nothing about. Maybe she’s carrying a lot of pain. Maybe she’s grappled with loss, fear, shame, insecurity. I know when I look at a man all those things are probable because it isn’t a gender thing, it’s a human thing. This is a tough gig. We don’t need to be reducing each other, we need to be uplifting each other. We have real problems in the world. We need to work together, and we could help each other so much if we recognized and acknowledged that. If we taught our girls and our boys to value people for who they are, not how they look, or what body parts they have.

Sending you love,

Ally Hamilton