I began training for the rigors of 6 hours a week of classroom time that would all be on the mat with daily yoga practices. For years I had been using a pilates reformer regularly and taking daily yoga classes at several local studios. I felt ready and Conor was joining me at other studios preparing and training. We hired a private yoga instructor to work with him teaching him the postures, learning sanskrit and helping him get ready for class. When I began telling our instructors at the various studios we attended that we were going to enroll at this yoga school for our 200 hours of teacher training I was met with various responses. One of our favorite and most supportive teachers was an alumni of the same school and she was thrilled for us. Other instructors were less than thrilled about our choice. My son's favorite male yoga teacher told us that the school was weird and that he had heard horror stories about the how they taught there and how they treated people. Another young yogi who had taught me in several workshops suggested I get our money refunded and go to another place she suggested which was the same place Conor's favorite male instructor had recommended. She didn't give any details as to why she recommending another school she just encouraged me not to go to the place I has signed up for. I had already paid and signed a contract and was excited and I didn't heed their warnings. I just didn't believe what they were saying and it was too late once I signed a contract.
So we prepped outside of the school with lots of yoga classes and many instructors hoping all those classes would get our bodies ready for YTT.
I had been practicing yoga since the mid 70's when as a child, who danced, I saw 'Lilias Yoga and You' on PBS and loved it. Conor also loves dance and had been practicing yoga since he was 6.
I felt we were prepared and had a good working knowledge of what would be expected.
Before the yoga teaching training started Conor and I took some classes at the studio where we would attending and something horrible happened. During class Conor began talking to himself to self regulate. Something he does often in social situations where he is triggered by crowds or his own intrusive thoughts, After class a man came up to us and quietly got inches in front of my face and told me we disturbed him and had no right to be there. I quickly told him Conor has autism and he hissed it didn't matter it wasn't an excuse, that we had ruined his practice and disturbed him and that he did not want us there. He backed off somewhat when I put my hand up and back away. I couldn't believe it. In 18 years of living with autism I had never had an experience like that. I was dumb struct and in shock. This beautiful studio where I had just committed to enroll in, with $6000 dollars for education and 8 months of our time suddenly became a place where we were not safe. I let the instructor know what had happened. He was on his way to teach another class and rushed but he did nothing and said nothing. I was shaking from shock and the trauma of what this man did and what he said. I was also afraid. Who was that man? Was he going to hurt us? I came home and told my husband who is law enforcement. He suggested I notify my teacher and let them know. I immediately did this. I wrote three emails explaining what had happened and my fears. Normally when someone in public reacts to my son's non conventional behavior and I tell him that Conor has autism and his behavior is normal for him they back off and apologize. This man didn't do that, he got nastier when I told him Conor had autism. He had wanted us out of his community, out of his class, out of that studio that I had just paid $6000 to attend. It got worse. The studio manager called. Her answer was she would talk to him but she was irritated with me for suggesting the studio could use a policy of inclusions and condescendingly told me her son's had autism and she knew all about autism. Her responses was basically shut up, I know everything about autism and you don't need to be concerned. I never heard from the instructor or our teacher of class didn't respond back. So I called my course instructor and told her my son and I were fearful of going back. Again I was met with condescending attitude that I was being a pain and didn't know what I was talking about. She even told me that this would be my experience to advocate for my son. She assumed I had never done that before. She also assumed we had never done yoga before, Her words were abusive and dismissive. About 4 months later the instructor whose class it had happened in stopped me in the hall between classes and told me Conor was always welcome in his class. Too late, Conor didn't want to ever go back to that class where the man in the black shirt was. Neither did I. I did go back to that class and the man in the black shirt was still there. I had been told that he had a head injury and that explained his behavior. It did nothing to make me feel safe around him.
Fast forward to the first day of class. Forty-seven people were packed in a very small classroom. They opened the doors to let us enter and the group rushed in to lay down mats and find space. Conor and I were pushed away even though we came 30 minutes early to get a space together. This was something that I had told them in advance that we needed. I had told the course instructor and the admission person that I would be Conor's aid in the class. At no time was I told that could not happen at their school. No space was made for us and there was no sign that they were prepared to include a person with autism. The all knowing studio manager, who also was our teacher's aid was there and when I showed her Conor and I couldn't not sit together she huffed, rolled her eyes and threw our mats down cramming Conor and I into a corner where his mat was overlapping another students. I moved his mat on mine because physical contact with strangers is a trigger for Conor.
It got worse after that. The instructors seemed to know very little about yoga. They were condescending, insulting, encouraged cliques, made many rude remarks and acted like mean girls in high school. They did not follow the syllabus or course outline. They wasted countless hours creating drama so they could feel like they were fixing it. They considered themselves yoga therapist. They spent a lot of classroom time plugging their private business of yoga therapy and trying to recruit us to come to them for yoga therapy and handing out medical advice. This was something that really bothered me. The Yoga Alliance does not recognised Yoga Therapy as a legitimate profession unless the therapist has at least a masters in psychology. This school is not certified or accredited by the Yoga Alliance to teach yoga therapy. These women do not have those degrees in education. They didn't even have a basic professional knowledge of anatomy. At one point one of their student teachers, who they allowed to teach our only class offered in the course on anatomy, told me I could grow back cartilage in my joints. I will have to let the Mayo Clinic know this.
One night they held us on our hands and knees for over 10 minutes, while in another class next door someone was banging on a huge gong loudly. This loud noise rattled people's nervous systems and several students began to cry. Conor and I came out of the pose and sat in horror as the class began to fall apart and the instructor went on and on about finding our edge and how she was helping us. Forty-six years of yoga and never have I seen or been in a class where the instructors use yoga like this. It wasn't about strength training, it was abuse. Now in the 90's when I had studied and worked in the field of domestic violence I had learned something of holding people in constraining or restrictive positions for long periods of time and what it does to the nervous system. When a person who is in power forces someone to stay in constraining and uncomfortable positions for long periods of time this the definition of torture. It has nothing to do with yoga. During this training several times I heard the instructors laugh about what they were going to do to us next. This is abuse pure and simple. They are using their position of authority to hurt us and cause us stress. Sick people do sick things.
Needless to say this wasn't the end of the abuse I witness. Abusive people keep other sick people around them to help them carry out their abuse. These women has a team of student teachers who came in and inflicted more abuse calling it an education. After the 1st module I withdrew Conor as the assistant teacher was hell bent on separate us telling me she wanted too, again for our own good. Conor is verbal but struggle to articulate his needs. He uses an augmentative communication device to help articulate his feelings and write. The instructor had told me prior to enrollment that she would not accept augmentative communication as journaling something the curriculum required. It's a private school in a public school I would have called the ACLU over refusing a disabled person assistive technology. This would be the Equivalent to refusing a blind person access to the text books in braille. Private schools set their own rules. All the pre phone calls and question asking and letting them know I was going to be Conor's aid in class because of his disability and is that going to be an issue were ignored by a woman who had no training in teaching other than 500 hours of yoga teacher training at a school where none of the credits transfer to a legitimate university. So basically it is like someone with an associate in the arts in non transferable credits calling themselves an expert and professor.
Many more nasty things happened while I was at this yoga school of trauma. I got my degree. I wish it had been from any place but there. Conor finished up his 200 hours of YTT with a wonderful teacher who allowed me to aid him and help her know when Conor wasn't following along or needed a break. That teacher training was a totally different experience. That teacher restored our faith in people. We have both gone on with this new teacher to learn sound therapy and restorative yoga along with Naam yoga practices. I am slowly unwinding from the trauma I experienced at the mean school of yoga. I will never go back there. I have learned that the guru of the teachers there, their esteemed teacher, had been cast out of his former ashram for sexual misconduct. Another nasty person hurting others and calling it yoga.
We survived and thrived. I forgive the meanness of these teachers but I refuse to be silent and just fade away. Writers write and in the words of my writer mentor Anne Lamott, "If people want you to write nice things about them, they should behave better."
This writing poured out. It needed to be told. I left out other traumatic events that happen and even more that I heard from others students in other courses of this healing arts school. Like most bullies they focus on the disabled and disenfranchised students and make their experience their living hell. Like every perpetrator of trauma, including people who sexually abuse children they are good at the psychological warfare games of victim blaming, isolating minimizing, denying, manipulation and gaslighting their prey. Thank God we are strong and could spot it. Conor was amazing many times when we have been in a class where something feels wrong to him he just walks out of class. He doesn’t say much he just leaves and doesn’t want to go back. Through years of dance, ensemble music and acting courses I have been condition to never walk out of a class. It is consider rude in most professional dance classes. You don’t leave a team practice during a drill or tell your instructor in your troop you need to leave to use the bathroom. If you leave a important class or rehearsal in the performing arts someone would take your spot. Anyway I am conditioned to take a lot of crap from teachers. Not Conor. With his blessed autism “the bullshit detector” he had these people sniffed out in a matter of weeks. People that are the real deal don’t hurt others because they get off on it. The real deal is still human and bleeds, it just understands ‘mercy’ begins with looking in the mirror and forgiving that person and getting well! Sometimes people are so crippled by their own injuries they can’t help bleeding on the people who didn’t cut them, sometimes they are so sick they want to cut others because it feels good to them. Hurting others like they are hurting is similar to self cutting’s I want to hurt on the outside like I am hurting on the inside. Both are a form of self mutilation. I am you and you are me also. We need to look at this in others and in ourselves so that we can change and evolve and heal. Not just forgive but hold each other up in social
Justice and as equals to say hey let’s fix this. Let’s talk about it. Until we fix the broken ones none of us move forward. It’s just like this country right now. Forgiveness isn’t the end. Justice is. To
Me that means healing the sick, holding them accountable for their behavior, no longer allowing them to minimize their actions and heal those broken parts and really living in wellness.
