#i fucking read through the community guidelines. there’s multiple things that could be and my friend doesn’t remember doing any of them

[dyed-indigo]

my friend’s blog got terminated and staff won’t even tell them why

[sincerelyreidburke]

please tell me more about boy scout dex

My friend, let me firstly apologize because I know I did sit on your ask for a little while. I think it’s been a month (?) since I posted that original random text-post about Boy Scout Dex, but as I mentioned in this brief PSA, I haven’t forgotten about him. I come to you today with a bullet-list!

As an FYI, I am definitely going to write actual prose fic about this in the future, so stay tuned. For now: let’s talk about Dex’s Boy Scout backstory.

- The first thing we should establish is that this is in the CCU. If you don’t know what the CCU is, it’s just my understanding of the canon universe. CCU stands for Cromwell Cinematic Universe, named for a stuffed lobster Dex has named Cromwell. Given that canon has never directly contradicted the idea of Dex having a stuffed lobster, I elect that this is the closest I’ll come to being canon-compliant. Prove me wrong. :D

- Anyway, the CCU is a series on ao3; you can read it here. Boy Scout Dex is simply another part of Dex’s colorful history.

- It’s really not that colorful, actually. I mean, he’s Dex. He comes to college afraid of baking.

- Anyway. Let’s talk, shall we? (This is going to get long, so under the cut we go.)

- In the CCU, Dex lives in Bar Harbor, which is one of Maine’s more famous towns, tucked into the east side of Mount Desert Island, which is just off the coast, and is the largest island in Maine. This is not a geography lesson, but since we’re here, here’s a visual. The little marked location is MDI, and then Samwell would be in the center-left bottom of the map.

- Anyways, with that digression aside, I’m bringing up Dex’s hometown/home island for two reasons: one, because I went and looked it up, and there is a Boy Scout troop there (Troop 89, though I was prepared to invent one if there wasn’t one on-island), and two, because the natural world around the island will become important later for Scout reasons.

- In order to proceed, let me introduce you to a few members of the CCU Poindexter-family expanded universe. MDI isn’t so small that everybody on the island knows everybody— the population is 10,000, which is just around the same as my own hometown, and I definitely don’t know everybody here. But what is true about my hometown is that there are certain families who have prominent roles in the community, and I would absolutely say that the Poindexter family is well-known on the island.

- They’re a very blue-collar, Irish Catholic, patriotic American family. Dex has cousins, aunts, uncles, and extended relatives galore. Dex’s uncles are notable enough in canon for him to mention them multiple times; in the CCU, he has 6 uncles on his pa’s side and another 3 on his ma’s. We’ll focus mostly on the Poindexter side for the purposes of Scout Dex.

- I have a feeling that the 7 Poindexter brothers (aka Pa and the 6 uncles) were probably all involved in one way or another with Scouts or at least some other community-building activity as kids. The one who rose to the top was Uncle Ronny, who is now the Scout Master for the troop on the island.

- Yes, I learned a copious amount of Boy Scout terms to make this post.

- Anyway, Uncle Ronny is a carpenter by day, and he takes the scouting stuff seriously; he sees it as a sort of civic duty. He has one son and three daughters (the female Poindexter cousins probably do Girl Scouts, but that’s a discussion for another time), and all his kids participate.

- Dex’s Pa, Will Sr., definitely also was super into this growing up. (In the historical AU I’m writing, Pa was in the Navy, and I cry every day thinking about how he can’t be in it in the CCU. This, as well as his general nautical lifestyle, is my consolation to myself.)

- Okay, so what do they actually do?

- Dex and his cousins grow up in the program. I feel like tiny redheads make up a solid fifty percent of the MDI Cub Scout troop in the late 90s and early 2000s. Dex is extremely outdoorsy even from a young age, and he loves Scouting, through and through— from the camps in the summer to earning badges and working his way up in ranks to even just spending time with his cousins. Cub Scout-era Dex sort of comes before all the repression, self-deprecation, and regression into the hardened, temperamental person he shows up at Samwell as. So in other words, Cub Scout Dex is a generally happy kid.

- Cub Scouts are from around kindergarten to fourth grade, or ages 5-10. Once you’re about 10 and a half, you move to general Boy Scouting, aaaaand this is where the fun begins, because in my research, I discovered…

- Sea Scouting.

- Sea Scouting is essentially a subdivision of the general Boy Scout program, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: Boy Scouts but with more nautical themes. Look… you guys… they wear fucking sailor suits… I’m physically deceased… I don’t think you understand how much I need this in Dex’s life.

- Has you or a loved one ever thought, hey, Mel, (that’s yours truly), do you by any chance have a thing about sailor suits? You may be entitled to the knowledge that you’re right… 

- Pretty much every Poindexter who did Boy Scouts was also involved in the Sea Scout program. Why? Uhhhhh… they live on the ocean and have a fishery and also just think about all that sweet sweet oceanic Dex symbolism—

- Right, okay, so things that are important to Dex during his time as a Scout: oceanic conservation, also conservation on land because Acadia National Park is right on MDI, boating safety, actual sailing. Fun fact: they have sailing competitions.

- Through the entirety of his Scouting life, Dex is really close with Uncle Ronny. He’s one of probably three cousins who are the most active in the program, and I’m jumping the gun a little on myself here, but he definitely does get Quartermaster. This is the highest rank you can get in the program, and it’s taken very seriously by everyone involved. It’s the Sea Scouting equivalent of Eagle Scout, which is probably much more familiar to most of you.

- Uncle Ronny is his go-to uncle for all things Scouting and also probably all things outdoorsy.

- Some time later, when Dex comes out to his family, Uncle Ronny will take it very, very hard. Although other uncles will come around, his relationship with Ronny will never really recover.

- Anyway! We are not going down that road at this moment in time. Let’s move on.

- By the way, the entire troop is definitely really closely tied with the island’s Catholic church. They very likely wear religious emblems on their uniforms. There’s a lot about God in the general guidelines of being a Boy Scout, and the troop is all over this. Because New England Irish Catholics.

- Okay, Dex gets Quartermaster. It’s the highest honor a Sea Scout can have. The core tenets/skills, fun fact, include: swimming, safety, marlinspike seamanship (???), boat handling, ground tackle, navigation, weather, and environment. He’d be getting this right around the same time he’s graduating high school. To get Quartermaster, you have to physically take control of a boat for like 40 hours, with other Scouts as witness. That is super badass.

- Also, I need you guys to see these uniforms. If someone drew Dex in this, I’d die.

- This is getting so long; I’m so sorry. Okay, some other time, remind me to talk about Dex’s internal struggle in response to the Boy Scouts homosexuality controversy. (I won’t go super into this right now, but essentially, until recently, gay men couldn’t be troop leaders. Gay youth membership has also been… generally discouraged, without being directly prohibited. There’s a lot to unpack there.)

- But, y’know! Poindexter family tradition, right???

- Aside from all the nautical skills, Dex’s Scout background translates to this at Samwell: he’s always prepared. The Boy Scout motto is literally Be Prepared. I think it’s easy to see, from all our canon knowledge of Dex, how this kind of background could factor into his character.

- I mean, the boy is constantly volunteering himself to fix things.

- Okay!!!! At the risk of making my longest text post ever, I will stop here for now. But please know: my ask box is open. There will be fic about this, and probably more of these bullet-list text posts. Ask or send me anything you’d like.

Thank you very much for the ask, and thank you for your patience while I put this together!

[wcamino-confessions]

Nikateen’s Ban & My Final Thoughts (Important)

Hello. I wasn’t going to make any more posts on here about you Nikateen, because I was hoping you would just be able to leave it instead of saying even more, but I suppose not, so here’s my response, which I’d greatly appreciate you (and others on the blog) reading. After this I will not mention the situation again unless someone tries to outright tell lies (not opinions, lies) about the situation or me.

Perhaps the reason no one said anything about the hornets is because they were genuinely nervous to speak up. I’ve seen your chat tease people over minor things, they might have been wary of that happening.

I never said you sent anyone to harass anyone. And I think your “fuck you, swallow a rock” messages were rude and may have be taken as harassment (I wouldn’t say that myself, but I might say you’re harassing me now as you seem to continuously swear at me). However, it was immature of you when someone said not to harass Light to say that you “didn’t fucking care, they’re disrespectful and I demoted them from the mod team ages ago”. Again, I wouldn’t say that’s sending anyone on a witch hunt, but you should be trying to prevent the harassment of others for their sake and your own sake. Also, you’re already banned for life, sexual bans and (borderline) harassment can’t be repealed. The sole reason I made the rant is, and this might surprise you, to CALM DRAMA DOWN, not to fuel it. Do you really think I wanted to be swore at and harassed for this? I did it to protect Light/Kade/Snatcher from baseless accusations, and so the community wouldn’t go on for months making “Bring Back Nikateen” rants without knowing the whole story.

Multiple people in the comments on that rant told me they would’ve gotten panic attacks seeing hornet images if they’d been there, let alone a murder hornet. Bugs are a common trigger, especially ones with stingers.

You’re free to leave me banned, but know that if I had been allowed to stay (which I don’t need to be as I think it’s best for me not to out of respect for you) I would have respected your amino rules no matter what I thought of them. That’s why I didn’t include a single screen of your sexual messages in the post, to ABIDE by your wishes and be respectful despite you being banned from WA. If you had messaged me before my ban from your amino, maybe you could’ve had some closure with me and we would be on neutral terms, instead of you feeling the need to resort to posting angrily on this blog.

I have no idea what you’re taking about on this one? Is this directed at someone else, because I’ve never said anything like that anywhere and didn’t even know that you were accused of that until just now. It’s a heavy and hurtful accusation to claim I said something like that, especially when it’s utterly false, and I had no clue this was even a situation???

You had multiple offences of breaking the guidelines. I wasn’t the one to take it to LT, I simply took screens to send to a friend who felt intimidated by you and wanted to talk to LT about it but was too nervous to stay in the chat any longer. Also, the Juicebox had well over fifty members, and accepted almost anyone, so your ban wouldn’t be repealed if they changed said rule.

I’m genuinely sorry about your ban. I’m not saying it was unjust, because it was simply due to the WA guidelines, but I PROMISE you I get no pleasure (in fact, I felt badly) seeing you banned. I don’t necessarily agree with the LT’s one hour rule, I personally think you should have been given 12 to 24 hours to say goodbye considering your circumstances, and even thought a strike could have served the same purpose (before your unkind actions), but that’s not my decision to make.

Now, I’m not going to stoop to angry words in this last bit. Instead I am going to wish you well outside of WA. If in a few weeks or months when this cools down you’d like to respectfully talk to me and get some closure, please let one of your friends (who have been very polite to me throughout, thank you guys) know so we can communicate over discord. Know I hold no grudges against you, even if you hold one against me, and that I do not think ill of you. Thank you for hopefully reading this all the way through, which means you must somewhat respect me, and have a good rest of your day or night.

Best wishes,

Orion

[ditttiii]

(´･_･`) Would it be bad of me to say that I'm honestly unsure about what to feel about masks? If you would rather not read and/or share, even to respond to, my ramblings about it, I completely understand, and I'll mark them at the start, so you can easily recognize which ones are mine and delete them if you so wish. I just wanted to share my thoughts/get your input? 1/5

Bad to say that you’re “unsure” or “skeptical”? No, or well at least I don’t think so. Early in the pandemic, we were told not to wear masks, mainly so as to not divert the limited supplies away from the healthcare workers. But another reason given was that masks are insufficient to protect the wearer from many respiratory pathogens, which yes, sure, true. Masks are no concrete protection and they are “insufficient” but masks were never made to be the final defense either? Social-distancing isn’t perfect, neither is testing or contact tracing, but sometimes a lot of imperfect, small preventive measures, can become a shield. If vaccine is our sword against the virus, the preventive measures, in some ways, are our shield. 

You said if everyone uses them in the right manner they’re great, but the sad fact is a lot of us don’t. Even after the constant, repetitive requests by medical professionals and governments all over the world, do all of us actually wear masks as we should? I don’t know about you, but everyday I see at least 10 people not wearing a mask (I scarcely, if ever step outside) and what about the amount of people who wear it wrong? 

As for the later part of this ask, and this is just my opinion, people who say shit like that will always face a higher risk of infection, regardless of if they wear a mask or not. It has been explicitly, repeatedly told that masks alone will NOT protect someone. They are no holy grail. Masks coupled with social distancing and basic awareness of the pandemic and it’s guidelines, however, will keep the casualties to a minimum until a working vaccine is released. A shield is no elixir,  and anyone who doesn’t understand that simple fact is a moron. As an adult, one should know better. 

If someone finds a mask unbearably uncomfortable and needs to keep adjusting it, then they should carry a sanitizer with them and use it prior to and after touching their mask. Being selfish and self serving during a pandemic? I...that’s just fucking stupid? Masks aren’t iron armors. Doctors, Nurses, Mine workers, factory workers--millions of people have been using them regularly for hours on end for years. They weren’t born with a mask strapped to their face. No, they learned to get used to it, pushed themselves through the initial discomfort. If they could do it then, we can do it now. It’s not everyday that we face a global pandemic with millions (and counting) of casualties.

People are careless, a piece of fabric tied to a face cannot make someone careless. Social distancing is possible even with a mask on, and maybe where you are, the population isn’t too high, but even then, why gamble with health? lives? 

Multiple studies have shown that face coverings can contain droplets expelled from the wearer, which are responsible for the majority of transmission of the virus. This 'source control' approach reflects a shift in thinking from a 'medical' perspective (will it protect the wearer?) to a 'public health' perspective (will it help reduce community transmission and risk for everyone?).

I think yeah the lack of law/official recommendation might be why a lot of people where you live don’t wear masks. Personally, I don’t think social distancing without a mask on is a smart thing to do. It is estimated that 40% of persons with COVID-19 are asymptomatic but potentially able to transmit the virus to others. In the absence widespread screening tests, we have no way of identifying many people who are silently transmitting the virus in their community. 

Suppose you are social distancing in your work place. You are infected, asymptomatic and thus most probably your infection is undetected. Now, your boss asks you to get a copy of some document. Fine, cool, you move to use the common printer, sneeze or cough into your hand, touch the buttons and bam. The virus is now on the keys. Done, copies in your hand, you move out the door. You are social distancing, great, but now anyone who touches those same keys and touches their mouth (even unconsciously) is at a risk of being infected. What if that person is a 40 year old woman with lung/heart issues? What if her immune system isn’t strong enough to combat the virus and she falls sick? 

We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have an effective working medicine. 

What. If. She. Dies? 

Whatever media outlet says that is wrong. Medical professionals have been telling us time and time again, that masks can only protect us to a certain extent, and that without other measures in place, we will face a higher risk of infection. The best approach is to be careful, respectful, and mindful of not just our health, but also those of others around us. Disease modeling suggests masks worn by significant portions of the population, coupled with other measures, could result in substantial reductions in case numbers and deaths. 

Be smart. Be thoughtful. Wear a mask, if not for yourself, then for those around you. A 20 yr might not die from corona, but a 40 yr old lung patient most probably will. 

Here are some links that convinced me to wear a mask.

|| ◈ || ◈ || ◈ || 

Stay Safe and Take care of yourself & those around you ♡

[forestkodama]

Several posts have been going across my dash in a short amount of time that are making an effort to use the species binomials for the animals they are talking about.  This is great!  I love it!  Here’s how it works and why it matters.

Species binomials (or scientific names or Latin names) were created to standardize how we recognize and organize different groups of life and name each unique type.  This naming systems is a way that can be recognized by the scientific community across multiple different cultures with different languages.  For many species, it gives them the unique name when they have may not have one - either in the past grouped in with other species, the name may be lost with the loss of the Indigenous cultures and languages, or simply overlooked - and naming something gives them an identity to promote their inherent value.  This population of life is unique.  We recognize it.  We want to preserve and protect it.  It’s a Proper Noun instead of a generic noun. (Without going too deep into the history of taxonomy, there is absolutely a discussion to be had about an international standard with European roots.  The naming conventions are based on Latin script and language, which makes it inherently biased toward European languages.  It has grown and matured since its 18th-century conception, and naming codes are more of a multicultural effort now.  This standardization is much more recent than many people believe, with international standardization starting in the early 20th-century and constantly updating.  For animals, we’re using the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) established in 1999.  For plants, the most recent naming codes, the Shenzhen Code, is new as of 2018.  It is, in essence, its own little language with an obscure paper trail, made up on the fly, including regional twists that may not be formally recognized and are always up for debate, ultimately made by people, flaws and all, and held to scientific rigor that demands we constantly examine and reexamine to reject that which is unsupported.)

Because these are names, and names are important, we made rules to recognize them.  Much like how we capitalize people’s names, capitalization matters for species, too.  The individual words of people names are often each capitalized: Keanu Charles Reeves, for example would look weird as Keanu charles reeves or keanu Charles reeves or Keanu Charles reeves, etc.  (Tumblr, in particular, is a playground for language, and playing with these conventions to test effective communication styles is much more common here, so keanu charles reeves doesn’t look as weird here, but context matters.)  These names can stand alone and still be meaningful, but that is not the case for species names. The names of species have two words that are not independent of each other, unlike human names.  We call ‘Keanu’ the first name and ‘Reeves’ the last or surname, but for species, the entire grouping of words is the name.  As such, we only capitalize the first part of the name:  Homo sapiens.  We do not call humans Homo by itself, because that is the genus Homo sapiens belongs to.  It stands alone as a grouping of closely related species.  There are other species within that genus, and claiming that Homo sapiens reflects all of Homo erases our cousins, even if they are extinct.  If we are talking about a species in Homo but we are not specifying which one, we say Homo sp., or Homo spp. for many species.  It’s rare to talk about the genus as a whole simply because grouping traits are often fewer and less interesting than the distinguishing traits for each species and because exceptions may exist that we don’t know about and thus risk assuming.  (This is super common in insects, where grouping ‘rules’ are more like ‘guidelines’ because bugs fucking love evolution.)

The ‘sapiens’ bit is called the epithet - it is the distinguishing part of the name to reflect the unique species in the genus. It is never capitalized as part of the name because it never stands alone.  The epithet ‘sapiens’ doesn’t get reused except in fiction (which I think is an unspoken rule - oh the vanity of humans), but other epithets are commonly reused for many species .  One redditor made a list of the most common epithets used in botany.  Ironically, the most common epithet is ‘vulgaris’, which means ‘widespread’ or ‘common.’  It is often assigned to the most commonly found member of that genus: Beta vulgaris (beets, chard), Vespula vulgaris (European yellowjackets), Sturnus vulgaris (European starling), etc.  There may be many species with the epithet ‘vulgaris’ but only one may have epithet per genus.  Locations are often used as epithets - Canada, America, and Japan are common - but they are still not capitalized, i.e. Tsuga canadensis, Fraxinus americana, Camellia japonica.

Some populations are recognized to be “subspecies” or ‘varieties’ which is to say, a distinct population within the species that, given enough time and isolation, could to be on their way to becoming distinct species themselves. This is a whole Thing in taxonomy that gets complicated and has a nasty history of racism when white people attempted to applied the concept to humans.  The easiest way of quickly summarizing this is that they are strings of epithets following the first, usually capping at one extra, but things can get weird the more obscure you go.  An easy example is Puma concolor, the mountain lion found (historically) throughout most of continental Western Hemisphere, and its Eastern North American subspecies, Puma concolor couguar, which is mostly now only found in Florida and is endangered. Species names are often italicized or underlined as a way of making them stand out in a block of text.  That’s it.  It’s an attempt to make the names more formal and static as opposed to the fluidity of casual language, and because some names are words we use in everyday language.  I don’t see a lot of conversation about this, but I do wonder if it is something that will change over time, as many people in the scientific communication community cheer on the use of species scientific binomials instead of common names.

See, common names for organisms are interesting playgrounds of language.  A single animal or plant might have dozens, hundreds even, of common names attributed to it.  The mountain lion is a classic example, with 40 common names in English alone!  It’s always fun to read through 19th-century scientific literature and find obscure common names.  Manitises were once called “devil’s riding horse” in the Eastern US.  The insects commonly called thrips (Thysanoptera) were once called twitters!  There is a lot of fun and joy to be had in common names at the local level, but at the global scale, it gets messy. Catch-all common names can muddy communication, and it is a major issue for regulating harvest of organisms that we use for food and utility, leading to overharvest and extinction.  “Whitefish”, something you might find at your fishmonger, grocery, or restaurant menu, refers to at least seven different species of fish.  A recent study found a disturbing amount of fraud regarding the species of fish sold mismatching the name they were sold under to consumers, something made easier because our common names apply to so many types.  Commercial fishers are lying (either intentionally or unintentionally), skirting regulation, making it difficult to understand what is happening to the fish populations we use for food.  

Wood is the other major area where common name confusion allows for overharvesting and fraud.  There are easily 40 different species called “rosewood”: At least 20 some Dalbergia species are called “true rosewood” and an additional 20 species from other genera that look similar.  A good number of the tree species called rosewood are overharvested and endangered.  Good luck figuring out what species of tree composes your rosewood guitar!  I’ve found it exceedingly difficult to track the sources of wooden materials, which emphasizes how challenging it is to have “perfect knowledge” of your buying power.  Saying that “oh this is just whitefish” or “oh this is just rosewood” allows for rare species to be lumped in with common species, and the overharvest of those species can go unnoticed by the person requesting the order half-a-globe away.  What regulations do exist appear to allow for this ambiguity or are otherwise infrequently enforced for smaller harvesting businesses.  (I’ve asked a supply chain specialist how we can show support for wanting better international supply chain transparency, and the answer was a long sigh.)

There are racist and other gross attributions among common names, and it is an ongoing effort to get those formally changed, but because those names are frequently used everyday language, it’s more of an effort to get people to change habits and stop using them.  Using their binomial is a great substitute for this, because it is clarifies communication across communities.  It’s already more commonly done among gardeners, even if they don’t realize it: Common ornamentals like hydrangeas and viburnum are the genus-level names for those flowers!

The big reason I like using the species binomial over common names is that it gives those species recognition that can be universally appreciated.  I started this long post with this concept, but recognizing the diversity of life on this planet is so important to our survival.  Diversity is strength, and the recognition of the unique combinations of species that make up communities around the world makes those places special.  The unique biota of every region of the planet contributed to the unique human cultures that developed there.  They contributed to their food, their technology, their clothes, their architecture, their daily patterns, their language.  Naming the species, communicating their unique identities, contributes to preserving those cultures.  It gives these plants and animals the power of being appreciated by all.

Disclaimer: I’m an entomological and invasion ecologist, so not a specialist in taxonomy, human ecology, etc., but this is a simple guideline for utilizing taxonomic language and understanding where it intersects with society.

[amplifiedesq]

Where Things Stand with Dr. Disrespect’s Twitch Ban

Last Friday (6/26/2020) news broke in the afternoon that Dr. Disrespect had been banned from Twitch. Details are still scarce as to why he was banned, but that hasn’t stopped everyone from trying to figure it out on their own. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of bullshit out there right now. In making this post I hope to provide accurate information as to where rumors got started, what facts we actually know, and what seems likely based on any actual reporting being done. So, let’s start with what we know from the two parties involved: Twitch and Dr. Disrespect himself.

What Twitch Has Stated

Per Zach Bussey’s tweet at https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1276620223576186880 and Shannon Liao’s tweet at https://twitter.com/Shannon_Liao/status/1276617617730568195, Twitch’s official statement reads:

As is our process, we take appropriate action when we have evidence that a streamer has acted in violation of our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. These apply to all streamers regardless of status or prominence in the community.

Twitch has provided no further public comment since Friday on this matter, but they did refund Twitch users their costs associated with an active Dr. Disrespect subscription.

What Dr. Disrespect Has Stated

Dr. Disrespect has made one statement through his Twitter account, https://twitter.com/drdisrespect/status/1277060051744591872, it reads:

Champions Club, 

 Twitch has not notified me on the specific reason behind their decision... Firm handshakes to all for the support during this difficult time. 

 -Dr Disrespect

This statement was made late Saturday night, nothing else has been said by Dr. Disrespect at this time.

Also, while not directly referencing anything, video have been posted of the final 8 or so minutes of his most recent stream before the ban. It can be viewed at https://youtu.be/yxGBwDVmzRA. I can’t say I have personally seen the end of too many Dr. Disrespect streams, but there are some strange moments in this for sure. 

For example, at the 1:58 mark he reaches for what seems like his pocket, looks down at something (presumably a cell phone), and seems pretty shook for the next 20 or so seconds, before going back into character. Around the 4:30 mark he appears to mute himself while telling someone in the room to hold off (he did mention his wife was in the room shortly before). Then, around the 8 minute mark he abruptly cuts off the stream after sighing/making some other similar noise and saying fuck”. Not to mention the discussion about conspiracy theorist David Icke and the watching of Roblox video while seemingly trying to collect himself. It was overall very strange in my opinion and seems telling that something was definitely going on.

What Was Being Reported Friday (the day of the ban)

When news broke Rod Breslau, better known as Slasher, was at the forefront for additional news he broke on the matter at https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1276613302483812352. The tweet reads: 

Sources: it is not DMCA

One of the popular theories when the ban came down was that this ban had to be DMCA related (so popular that DMCA was a trending topic on Twitter much of the afternoon). This tweet put that theory to rest.

Slasher also went on to post the following tweet in regard to the ban (https://twitter.com/Slasher/status/1276742960286183424): 

look: for several hours now I have been told from credible sources the reason DrDisrespect has been banned. however due to the importance and sensitivity around the subject I have refrained from going on it. i don't feel comfortable with it currently

A similar statement was tweeted by Twitch streamer ShannonZKiller that stated: 

From my own sources: Doc is indeed done, and not just on Twitch. I know why and cannot say. But this is serious.

While the Tweet has since been deleted, it of course lives on thanks to the internet (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbeE7tkX0AIc8oT?format=jpg&name=large). Shannon did provide the following explanation for deleting the tweet (https://twitter.com/ShannonZKiller/status/1276634901643747329): 

Hey, I totally get that it turns out ppl didn't want more confirmation that it is a permanent ban without the reason and felt the tweet was clout chasing, so I will respect those perspectives and delete the tweet. 

 Thanks for putting me in check!

I don’t recall seeing, nor am I finding now, any other reports that provide additional details outside of this being 1) a permanent ban; 2) not DMCA related; and (according to two individuals) 3) a serious/sensitive matter.

The Rumor Mill

With no clear information pertaining to the reason behind the ban it has left those interested to come up with their own theories and push them out to the masses. From what I have seen the following theories are the most popular right now:

1) A new streaming service

2) Highlighting Conspiracy Theories

3) A Sexual Assault Allegation

A New Streaming Service

This theory keeps gaining steam, though I don’t think anyone is convinced of just what that new streaming service is. One theory provides for a new service called “Brime”. Another provides for a Spotify backed service. Seeing as Dr. Disrespect just signed a multiyear deal with Twitch in March to remain on the service (https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dr-disrespect-signs-multi-year-deal-stay-twitch-1283878) this seems highly unlikely in my opinion. Why would a new start-up risk a tortious interference claim against them that could trouble them before they even got started?

Highlighting Conspiracy Theories

Dr. Disrespect has dabbled in conspiracy theories on multiple streams, not just his last one. He had one strike against him on Twitch already, but that related to filming in a bathroom during E3. The Twitch Terms of Service read:

you will not:  

 i. create, upload, transmit, distribute, or store any content that is inaccurate, unlawful, infringing, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, harassing, threatening, abusive, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable;

While the creation of content that is inaccurate is a violation of the terms of service, it seems far fetched that the conspiracy theory talk on his last stream is what landed him a permanent ban. It certainly seemed like something was up prior to those topics being brought up. I’ve also seen him watch conspiracy theory YouTube videos live on stream in the past with no ban following, so in my opinion this one also seems like a stretch.

A Sexual Assault Allegation

Prior to Dr. Disrespect’s ban, sexual assault allegations against streamers and Twitch’s role in it was the main topic of discussion in the industry for the week. Wired has an article up detailing much of what transpired in this area at https://www.wired.com/story/twitch-streaming-metoo-reckoning-sexual-misconduct-allegations/.

With all the allegations that were popping up Twitch felt the need to respond and made a post on their blog on June 24th: https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/06/24/an-update-to-our-community/. Part of the statement reads:

We want to provide an update on our investigations into the recent allegations of sexual abuse and harassment involving Twitch streamers and actions we’re taking. We are reviewing each case that has come to light as quickly as possible, while ensuring appropriate due diligence as we assess these serious allegations. We’ve prioritized the most severe cases and will begin issuing permanent suspensions in line with our findings immediately. In many of the cases, the alleged incident took place off Twitch, and we need more information to make a determination. In some cases we will need to report the case to the proper authorities who are better placed to conduct a more thorough investigation.

So, just two days before Dr. Disrespect’s ban Twitch issued a statement involving their investigations into sexual abuse and harassment that had a line that states: “We’ve prioritized the most severe cases and will begin issuing permanent suspensions in line with our findings immediately.”

On top of that, you have two (non-random) people on Twitter who claimed this to be a sensitive/serious matter (granted, neither would provide details and could easily have just been trying to draw attention to themselves). Of all the theories going around, this would seem to be the most likely of any of them. That said, like some of the other cases popping up, there is no identified victim here or public accusation. As such, it remains just a theory at this time. 

Conclusion

With Twitch staying silent on the matter it’s next to impossible to fully understand what has happened here and why Dr. Disrespect is banned. Maybe as this week goes on some of the reporters that claim inside knowledge will get comfortable with their sources and/or find out more details to expand upon their original tweets. For the time being we’re stuck not knowing for sure and it’s basically giving the content creators that thrive on gossip plenty of fodder for their following.

[sineala]

Hi Sine! I recently re-read your Star Trek AU--which is BRILLIANT--and I noticed that it's got a pretty complex plot. Then I thought about it, and a lot of your fics have multiple things going on in them at once. I think Living On Your Breath has something like four plots: Steve's personal, Tony's personal, the villains, and then Carol&Wanda's. Plot complexity is something I'm trying to get better at, so I thought I'd ask how you come up with and manage everything! Thanks for writing!

Thanks for asking! I had to think about this for a bit, but I came up with a few rough guidelines for how I handle plot. I’m putting this under a read more because (1) I am wordy, and (2) I don’t want to spoil either of those stories for anyone who hasn’t read them.

A disclaimer: I am entirely self-taught in that I have never had a writing class in my life and I don’t really do well with those writing help books. So basically what I have learned has been picked up by reading a lot of books, reading a lot of fanfic, and writing a lot.

This is not so much a plot tip as General Writing Advice, but there’s an Ira Glass quotation that circulates Tumblr every so often that I really like:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I’ve certainly had this problem; I’ve spent years not writing because I’ve come up with ideas I knew I couldn’t execute to my own standards. And then I did it anyway, and eventually I got better and now I’m at a point where if I have an idea for a story it is probably something that I feel like I would enjoy if I wrote it (as opposed to “God, I can’t pull that one off, I hope someone else writes it”). It does make leaving exchange prompts kind of tricky because I think one up and then NO I WANT TO WRITE IT MYSELF. (The Jar is a Cap-IM Holiday Exchange prompt I nearly left before deciding I wanted to write it myself.)

Anyway. Plotting long stories. The big difference between a long story and a shorter story  is that you need to be conscious of the overall structure and where you are going. You know all those rising action/climax/falling action plot outlines? Take a novel you like and think about it like that. Break it down. If you want a long story that feels cohesive, you’re probably going to want to adhere to that basic structure. You don’t necessarily need to make an outline of that form – I don’t bother – but you should have in your mind the idea that three-quarters of the way through (or so) is the Big Important Scene that your story has been building towards, and then the rest is cleanup.

I am generally writing romance stories, and the tropes of the genre are such that there are often a lot of shortcuts I can take when I am trying to work out what’s going to happen, especially if these are first-time stories – the big moment is the characters declaring their love, finally getting together, and so on and so forth. So you ask yourself, okay, what are the obstacles to their love? Why didn’t they get together before? Maybe they have to learn to love each other. Maybe Steve doesn’t know Tony is Iron Man. Throw the obstacles in their path! Make them get over them!

But the reason these stories get so long on me is that that’s not usually the only plot. The other plot can be personal to the characters (say, Tony’s drinking problem) or involving the personal lives of the other characters, or, heck, maybe they even have to save the world. Basically I just… intersperse the development of both plots, and I try to make sure that every scene is furthering something: either plot or characterization. (When I am outlining the story itself, I try to keep tabs on this.)

Because these are generally romance stories, the A-plot, the one I give the most weight to, is probably going to be the romance plot, and the B-plot is going to be whatever else happens in the story. The absolute best way to join these plots together is to make them both build together and then hit their respective plot climaxes at as close to the same time as you can manage. If the B-plot is saving the world, Tony is tragically injured in the fight with supervillains, and that’s when Steve tells him he loves him. If the B-plot is personal discovery, Tony gets sober and decides he can be with Steve. Something like that.

How do I keep track of this? I used to do it in my head. I don’t recommend that part. I know some people can handle writing novels by the seat of their pants, but I work a lot better with outlines; I have a lot of abandoned novels where I basically didn’t remember what was going to happen next, and… whoops. I actually do all my outlining and writing (of long stories, anyway) in Scrivener (which is the best program I have ever spent money on). I like Scrivener because it’s set up to handle stories with a lot of ancillary research material, and furthermore it’s organized by scene, which makes a lot of sense to me.

First is the brainstorming. I like to bounce my ideas off other people when I am still in the thinking stage (like “hey, would you read a story about X?”) and then I spend a while mulling over The Scenes That It Makes My Brain Really Happy To Think About, which are usually (for me) probably the climax of the story. (This might be Steve And Tony Finally Get Together or Steve Finds Out Tony Is Iron Man or Steve Cradles Tony’s Broken Body In His Arms.) In my current WIP, it’s probably Steve Realizes He Loves Tony After All.

And then eventually I make an outline. The outline is basically a complete synopsis, scene by scene, of everything I want to happen in the story, with as much detail as I need. Sometimes there will be bits of dialogue, sometimes it will be OH FUCK SOMETHING PLOTTY HAS TO HAPPEN HERE, FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS. Because generally I will know that the non-relationship plot must advance before I know exactly how. (I revise it as I go.) The outline for the Trek AU is about 1500 words. (The outline for its sequel is 3000 but it uses more complete sentences as it was intended for other people to read.) I stick this all in the Research pane of Scrivener along with my canon notes and whatever else I need to refer to while writing. This is a good time to stop and make sure that the outline feels like a story – all the emotional beats are in the right place, there’s a good mix of A-plot and B-plot. and so on and so forth. I just squint at it and wing it but I’m sure there are various exercises you can do if you like that sort of thing.

Then I do the actual scene breakdown. Because I’m using Scrivener, it has this very cool functionality whereby every scene has an associated “notecard.” You can give each card a title, organize them in folders by chapter, reorder them, and write up whatever you want on the notecard; I fill it with a description (expanded from the outline) of what’s going to be in each scene. Sometimes if I have multiple POVs I will color-code each scene.

As for specific complex plots, let me tell you about how I came with the stories you asked about.

Living On Your Breath was easier because it was for a RBB, and the artist (Phoenix) had a few suggestions about canon, and from there I let canon help guide me to filling out the plot. The art that went with it was Tony in leather and fishnets, choking Steve out. Which is, you know, evocative. Phoenix had suggested that the plot involve mind-control (which seemed reasonable as Tony looked pretty evil in the picture) and also she wanted to know if I could write a story set in Avengers v3, which I had never read, but I was game.

So, I thought, okay, this was going to be a story where a mind-controlled Tony had somehow captured Steve and decided to choke him. How could I get a plot out of that? Well, I thought, what if the drama of the story isn’t just about Tony being villainous? What if it’s a story about kink and consent? What if maybe Steve would have wanted Tony to choke him out when he wasn’t evil? What if Tony secretly wanted that too and Steve had no idea? Well, that seemed like a decent amount of angst to me.

And that right there suggested a basic plot structure. Steve and Tony would get together at the beginning, and we would establish that Steve had these unfulfilled kinky desires, and they would be happy together but not A+ perfect because they are not talking about all their unmet needs because, let’s face it, they have communications problems. Then Tony gets kidnapped and mind-controlled, and kidnaps and tortures Steve, and he does everything Steve wants except it’s fucking terrible because, well, Steve didn’t so much want Tony the supervillain to whip him. Just regular Tony. And so the rest of the story was going to be about them healing and putting themselves back together (although getting worse before they get better) and reclaiming everything they did and admitting their secret kinky desires and having Tony choke Steve out in a truly wholesome and loving way.

I knew that there was going to have to be some kind of plot involving villains – I mean, someone had to do the kidnapping and mind control – so I went looking for obscure villains (since I’d had enough of AIM and Hydra) with a grudge against Steve and ended up, unfortunately, with the Secret Empire. They were so obscure, I told myself! Surely Marvel wasn’t ever going to use the name for something big! Ahahaha. *sobs quietly to self*

I also decided that it might be nice to have the events of canon going on as a backdrop to the story, and as soon as I read v3 I knew exactly what I was going to do because, see, I fell in love with Carol’s drinking arc. Avengers v3 starts out so sweet and the team loves each other and then… it kind of starts to fall apart. Not that they don’t love each other, but it’s apparent that several of them have Problems, and Carol’s drinking is the definition of a Problem. So I wanted to have the team start to go along perfectly and then break apart as Carol does, with Steve and Tony’s post-mind-control relationship along for the ride at the same time. Suppose it all comes to a head with Steve and Tony on the same mission that gets Carol kicked off the team? And then, well, we know Tony goes up to Seattle in canon for recovery from a fight in canon – what if, in this version, he brings Steve with him? And later on, when Carol drop-kicks Tony through a jet and finally sobers up, what if Steve is there too? So that way both Tony and Carol get to get better at the same time. Recovery arc for EVERYBODY.

Honestly I added Wanda because I figured that Carol needed SOMEBODY to be there for her (it really irritated me that the team basically just kicked her out on her own, in canon) and she and Wanda clearly like each other a lot. Having said that, about 50% of Carol’s plot is straight out of canon, dialogue included, although I played with the timing, added Wanda, put Carol in the Blue Area mission, and gave Steve and Tony a massive breakup in the middle of the mission.

The structure of this one was pretty simple – before, during, and after Steve’s captivity. Every scene in the During section was one of Steve’s days. During the After scenes I was basically trading off Steve/Tony and Carol & Wanda plot development.

Straight on till Morning was trickier to plot. For most of its imaginary life, it didn’t have a plot; it was me sitting around and thinking, “Gosh, I like the Avengers and I like Star Trek and I want to imagine the Avengers in spaaaaace.” But that wasn’t a plot. That wasn’t even anything close to an idea for a story. So it just kind of sat there for a couple years rattling around my brain. And, really, the backstory all came first, and the plot kind of sprung out of everything there had to be in order to put the backstory in play.

One day I was sitting there thinking about what the Avengers would be in the Star Trek universe, and I thought, “Well, obviously Steve is a starship captain and OH MY GOD STEVE IS A GENETICALLY-ENGINEERED SUPERHUMAN FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.” I had been thinking of the story as a complete fusion, where no one existed with their regular Marvel identities, but suddenly it occurred to me that if Steve existed in the Star Trek universe and had still been Captain America in World War II, things could get really interesting – because the Federation, bastion of diversity and tolerance, is fully prepared to hate the fuck out of you if you are genetically-engineered. Especially, and I am just guessing here, especially if you are from the twentieth century. Steve would predate Khan and the other supermen, but, well… maybe Steve was the first Augment. So that’s an interesting idea! The one universe where being Captain America would actually be reviled!

So that’s not a plot, either, really, but that’s part of a plot: Steve has a Terrible Secret. He is an Augment. What’s going to happen when Tony learns his terrible secret? Well, he’s probably going to take it pretty badly.

Steve’s backstory was pretty much a direct port of the Cap stuff plus making him frozen twice so that (1) he could have prior starship command experience and (2) I would throw off everyone who assumed that him being frozen once was the way I was translating his comics backstory. At least until the scene where Tony gets out his Cap poster, anyway.

Tony’s backstory was a little more complicated. Because the thing about an AU is, you have to ask yourself which elements of a character and their backstory are 100% essential. And the weird thing about Tony is that a lot of the things that are key components of his superhero life don’t really translate to Star Trek. Like, take Tony’s famous MCU line, “genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.” Welcome to the post-scarcity economy, Tony; there’s NO MONEY. That knocks out “billionaire” and “philanthropist.” “Playboy” is, let’s face it, probably also linked to “billionaire,” and for 616 Tony it gets use as basically part of his intricate layers of personal masks where he doesn’t sleep with nearly as many people as he wants you to think he does. That leaves “genius.” And we’re gonna make him a Starfleet engineer! Everyone’s a genius there!

The Iron Man suit, likewise also out. Because, yes, it’s cool, but it’s not Star Trek cool. A flying suit? Try a starship. Maybe he designs starships, I said to myself.

So what are the key qualities of Tony? His genius, his engineering aptitude, his general personality, let’s throw in his former alcoholism, and of course his Vietghanistan trauma leading to heart injury. So something happened to him on Planet Vietghanistan, obviously, and whatever it was hurt him, but it didn’t lead him to make Iron Man. But he still needed to do something heroic, but it had to be Trek-style heroic. What if he saved a bunch of his shipmates? What if he saved a bunch of his shipmates and built a ship to rescue them and Captain Yinsen died tragically in his arms? And what if Tony was so fucked up by all of this that he decided to quit Starfleet? Until, of course, he meets Steve.

This suggests an arc for Tony’s character, the same way Steve’s backstory suggested an arc for him: Tony learns to love himself, Starfleet, and Steve. Maybe not in that exact order.

And remember, Steve has A Secret. Well, that’s going to interfere with Tony learning to love him. Obviously Tony will eventually come around. So from there you can see where the major obstacle to Steve and Tony’s happiness is going to be.

The first third-to-half of this story was therefore pretty easy to write, because it was just a matter of introductions and shoving in all the backstory. Meet Tony. Meet the ship. Meet Steve. Let’s go to Starfleet Academy and learn a bit about the Prime Directive and Tony’s tragic backstory. Meet the crew. Set off on a maiden voyage. Tell Steve about Augments, watch him freak out, and watch Tony have no clue why.

And then, of course, there had to be A Plot. Every scene basically advances the worldbuilding, Steve’s character, Tony’s character, or the plot. This was also pretty easy to come up with, because it’s Star Trek, and if you want to make your Star Trek story feel like Star Trek, steal a Trek plot. Of course they beam down to a planet and meet some aliens. Then something goes terribly wrong, something bad happens to the ship, but it is all fixed just in time and they sail on. You know how it goes. There is a pre-existing structure. I had actually been joking that if I couldn’t think of anything I’d just sex pollen Steve and Tony and well… I couldn’t think of anything else. Sex pollen it was!

I think sex pollen actually works well, because it is a very Star Trek trope (quick, count all the sex pollen episodes; you might need more than one hand) and also because the absolute worst time to find out that your captain is an Augment is after you’ve been forced to sleep with him to stay alive. I figured that scene was going to be one of the super important plot moments.

I debated using a Trek alien race or a made-up race but decided to go with Skrulls, on the grounds that evil shapeshifters are also very Star Trek and also I thought maybe I could fool people into thinking I made them up as long as I didn’t bring in Veranke until after the Skrull reveal.

And then, well, the ship is in danger, Tony nearly dies (you can tell that Star Trek II is one of my favorites) sacrificing himself to save the ship, gets his heart injured again, decides while he’s dying that he was being an idiot about Steve, and lets himself actually love Steve.

Basically, it is literally several actual Star Trek plots mashed together with Captain America’s backstory and a lot of infodumping. It is honestly way simpler than it looks; there were plenty of existing models for How To Tell A Star Trek Story and I pretty much just stole them.

I hope that helps.

[chelseaandthediscourse]

           Recently, I found myself embroiled in a debate with another user on Tumblr in a back-and-forth that encompassed issues such as trans rights advocacy, the medicalization and pathologization of trans identities, and the exclusion of non-binary identities from the trans community. These, I feel, are very important issues that the entire trans community needs to look at more critically and decide what kind of movement we want to be. The politics espoused by the person with whom I was debating are harmful to some of the most marginalized of our community and by excluding them we risk repeating the mistakes of the past in throwing those of us who are ‘too transgressive’ under the bus for our own gain, an issue I expand on during the debate. This debate, in my opinion, is an example of transnormativity and intercommunity bigotry in action, and it shows precisely why we need to combat the biases within the trans community if we want a trans rights movement that isn’t a repetition of the hegemonic assimilation that has hurt so many in the broader LGBTQ+ community.

           The debate started with me responding a post which was lauding the ‘truscum’ ideology. For reference, truscum, short of ‘true transsexual scum,’ is a term, usually pejorative, denoting a trans identified individual who believes that trangender identities are a medical, typically psychological, disorder, which requires strict diagnostic guidelines and subsequent medical treatment in order to be considered ‘valid.’ Typically, those who espouses truscum ideology are also very set in thinking that gender and sex exist as a binary, often acknowledging that while gender is social construct, sex is a biological truth based on genitals and other physical markers.

           I have transcribed the debate in its entirety below, but the original post containing my participation in the debate may be found at https://chelseaandherself.tumblr.com/post/159568375672/truscum-more-like-common-sense. In the beginning, there are a few other participants, but it swiftly moves to just being between myself, Tumblr name Chelseaandherself, and by debate opponent, tumblr name Thathighclassbitch. I have underlined all usernames to denote the start of a new post, and bolded the usernames of myself and Thathighclassbitch to make them stand out.

Thathighclassbith: Truscum? More like common sense.

Softtrains: truscum? More like let people live their lives fucker

Asprodente: More like have an at least semi-verifiable way of identifying a real condition.

More like stop justifying people’s whimsical identifications, especially when it hurts the case for real transgenders to be accepted because they’re thrown into the boat with people who throw on a new change of clothes and call themselves trans for snowflake points.  You’re participating in swaying the science side of the right away from transgenderism.

You are not helping and you’re making it worse.

Softtrains: hey… if people identify as a gender they weren’t assigned with at birth… guess what theyre a “real transgender”

Asprodente: Let me ask you something, what does it mean to identify as something? What is the requisite? 

Softtrains: it means being the goddamn thing youre identifying as

Asprodente: Actually, you know what, I’ll just skip beating around the bush and get right to it.

Calling yourself something and being that something are vastly different. If I said I was trans, right now, would you believe me? Is my word the only factor worth consideration?

How about an example:  / I say “I have diabetes.”. You don’t have much reason to doubt that, but you don’t know if I really have it.  Someone else asks me, “Are you sure you have diabetes?” Now, this question is quite rude, yes, but I fail to present a doctor’s note, a prescription, or any medication for diabetes, and have not presented enough of the symptoms. I tell them that I identify as a diabetic. 

Is that okay? In that scenario, should I be defended to identify as diabetic? What if diabetics nationwide are facing discrimination? Well, after my stunt, the anti-diabetics have gone around saying “Hey, they might be one of those fake diabetics!” to justify their treatment. Diabetics are now being treated worse than they were before. / We do have a way of determining whether someone is trans. It’s called dysphoria. We’ve observed mental discrepancies between trans brains and cis brains, which make MtF trans brains look more similar to cis female brains than cis male brains.

Geekandmisandry: There is some, but minimal and conflicting evidence that brain waves are different in trans people, relying on that is ridiculous when the researchers THEMSELVES tell you not to because it’s not conclusive and there are a great number of variables.

Trying to test trans people is fucking ridiculous, comparing it to diabetes is willful ignorance. There isn’t a blood test for transness and don’t pretend you’re on a “science side” when you clearly haven’t actually looked at the finding, you’re just doing a hopeless regurgitation of some cherry picked data.

It shows.

Sex and gender are complex and anyone who claims to know the exact nature of them at this point of our scientific research is a liar.

Chelseaandherself: Sex and gender are social constructs.

Blood sugar is not.

Thathighclassbitch: Actually

Vagina equals female Penis equals male And when you have gender dysphoria, you either want to have a dick or a vagina.  It’s not a social construct.

Chelseaandherself: Buddy, pal…listen…please actually read legitimate sources on the matter before coming on to my blog with this stuff.

There’s absolutely zero scientific reason to equate having certain genitals with certain genders or sexes. You’re erasing the entire spectrum of intersex just to create a binary system. What do you call someone with a penis who has an XX karotype? Because that’s possible. Someone with a vagina with an XY karotype? Because that’s also possible. As is any number of other assortments of genital and chromosome combinations that make it impossible to actually have a binary system of sex. We made it up. That’s the definition of a social construct.

Thathighclassbitch: That’s rare and not exactly a ‘normal’ thing. Normal people have xy if they’re male, and xx if they’re female. That’s science. And intersex is a mutation, and is not a normal thing. And even so, it wouldn’t be SOCIAL.

And buddy, pal…maybe give some backup for the shit you’re saying before coming onto MY post. Because this is my post. And I don’t care if you respond, it’s public. But don’t shit me with coming onto your blog.

Chelseaandherself: http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

http://www.isna.org/faq/ten_myths/rare

http://oii-usa.org/2563/how-common-is-intersex-in-humans/

Most estimates put intersex conditions at about 1-2% of the population, but it’s hard to get an accurate measure and these are fairly conservative estimates. This may not seem like a large portion of the population, but it’s actually pretty significant. And ignoring that large of a population is just bad science.

https://sites.psu.edu/evolutionofhumansexuality/2014/02/19/third-genders-new-concept-or-old/

Prior to colonization, multiple cultures around the world recognized genders and sexes outside of the binary, demonstrating that our understanding of such matters is constructed by our culture. Even within western society, understandings of sexuality and gender have not been static; for a long time, what we now consider to be homosexual men were considered a third gender. I do not have a convenient online source to link to you for this, but consider checking out Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBTQ Studies by Jonathon Alexander, et al.

http://sociologyinfocus.com/2016/08/sex-is-a-social-construction-even-if-the-olympics-pretends-its-not/

Here’s a nice little article that discusses the issue and provides a few other sources.

Sources I can recommend off the top of my head but can’t link you to as they aren’t available online:

Sexing the Body by Anne Fausto-Sterling

Bodies That Matter by Judith Butler (or any number of her other works)

A significant portion of the works of Michel Foucault, most notably The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception and The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, both of which discuss how knowledge in the sciences is constructed through a social and cultural lens.

I could provide you with a significantly better selection of sources if you had access to a university level research database, but…

Thathighclassbitch: I’ll check out the links later, alright? So do consider that when I’m replying right now, since I haven’t checked them out yet.

But intersex and such is still a rare case, and people can usually identify with either one of the sexes. Plus the belief of more genders is, like I said, a belief, and should not be connected to being transgender, since it harms people like me in various ways.

Chelseaandherself: Intersex is a rare case compared to some things and not when compared to other things. As some of those articles mention, the 1-2% estimate puts it at being about as rare as being born with naturally red hair and more common that cystic fibrosis. The point is, it’s not a statistical anomaly, and ignoring it is bad, reductive science. And further, some people do not know they are intersex.

Sexing the Body by Fausto-Sterling specifically addresses the issue of an Olympic athlete who had to undergo genetic testing to participate only to discover that, having lived her entire life thinking she was a “normal” female, she was actually intersex and had latent testes hidden in her body. I’ve switched back to mobile tumblr, otherwise I’d find you a link on her, but her name was Maria Patino, a quick Google search should find her. And there are other accounts of similar things. The belief of more genders is just that, a belief, I agree, but, I’m arguing, that the belief in a binary system of gender is also just that, a belief. I literally have no idea what you being transgender has to do with this discussion. I’m transgender too and I think the discourse your perpetuating is harmful to me.

Thathighclassbitch: No I completely understand that ignoring that issue is bad and that’s not what I was going for when it comes to this post. This post was mainly directed at people who think they are nonbinary in any way. Because these people confuse this for being a different gender, and think they are transgender. Even though you cannot transition to any non binary gender.

Gender identity, however, is a social construct. This is mainly just the way you present yourself and kinda the way you respond to gender roles. (Don’t fully know how to put it.)

And what I meant with the last part was that people who say they are transgender, yet don’t have dysphoria, are hurting people like me with dysphoria. I wasn’t directing it towards me, but more towards a group of people I’m part of.

Chelseaandherself: I know what gender identity is?

But okay, look, this is what it comes down to then. You want non-binary people out of the trans community because you think they somehow hurt trans people. Again, I reiterate that I am a transgender woman, I am part of this group that you claim to be protecting. All you’re really doing is policing people’s identities in the same way that binary trans people have had their identities policed and told they are legitimately the gender they identify as. You’re also perpetuating the same discourses that historically have been used to keep transgender people out of the mainstream LGBTQ+ movement. I speak here specifically of that movement within the US; I see on your blog description that you are Dutch and I cannot speak to the history of any civil rights movements originating in that area of the world. But in the US, trans people were systematically pushed out of the rights movement because we were considered too transgressive and were thought to be hurting the more normative, cisgender members of the community by holding them back from acceptance in mainstream culture. You are doing the same to a marginalized section of an already marginalized minority. What you are essentially arguing to is the idea of trickle down advocacy…much like trickle down economics, the idea is that we fight for the rights of the least oppressed, and those rights will eventually trickle down to those who are more oppressed, and we slowly work our way down the rungs of the social hierarchy. But this isn’t a great model for social rights. Think about it this way, your goal is to fight for the rights and acceptance of binary transgender people, correct? Doing it you’re way will eventually gain those things for binary trans people, and sure, that’s great, but non-binary individuals will still be out in the cold. If you include non-binary people in you’re advocacy, then maybe the fight is a little harder and a little longer, but in the end everyone is better off. Let’s be honest, non-binary identities ARE more transgressive to social norms and people have more trouble accepting those identities. Because of this, don’t you think that if non-binary identities are accepted and recognized within the mainstream, that binary trans identities like yours and mine are also going to be accepted?

Thathighclassbitch: You see, what I’m saying is that nonbinary does not equal trans. It means not confirming to gender roles, and it’s something you cannot transition to.

People should first understand what nonbinary is, and should understand that it’s not a gender, before we can work towards acceptance.

Nonbinary and transgender are two different things. One has something to do with a mental disorder, and the other is not confirming to the stereotypical gender roles. It’s not an entirely new and amazing gender.

Basically, you can be a nonbinary man or nonbinary woman, but you’re still a man or a woman either way. It’s basically another way of saying that someone is a tomboy or a femboy.

However, tomboys/femboys do appear to have different stereotypes than nonbinary people, and nonbinary includes both men and women. So I suppose that would be a bigger community.

But it’s not transgender.

Chelseaandherself: Okay, have fun thinking your identity is a mental disorder and playing identity police.

This is no longer a productive debate as I can see that you are very set in your thinking here, so I really don’t feel the need to spend my time in the futile pursuit of trying to convince you otherwise. Thank you for the mental exercise and have a lovely day.

             At this point, I decided to disengage from the debate as it became clear to me that not only did he seem unwilling to actually read the sources which I provided, on his request, but also had no intention of engaging with me with arguments that were more substantial than a reiteration of phobic language. The debate was, in short, entirely unproductive. We, as a community, need to do better than this. We need to stop repeating the same bias that has been thrown at us and using it to further marginalize members of our community. Trickle down social justice isn’t good enough and it doesn’t work.

[laurelkrugerr]

What’s Up With Open Yoga Studios in COVID-19 Hotspots?

July 28, 2020 15+ min read

“Okay. So, the ‘Breath of Joy’ is a practice we would do at the beginning of every Hatha class, which involves a very heavy open mouth exhalation. It’s a three-part inhale through the nose with corresponding arm movements.” 

Mimi Thomas, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher, is sitting on a patio in a maroon floral beach cover-up. She stands to demonstrate.

“Inhale one, arms out in front of you,” she says. “Inhale two, arms come out wide. Inhale three, filling your lungs all the way to the top, arms up, biceps by the ears. And as you exhale, open your mouth and go, ‘Haaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.’” As she exhales, she swings her upper body forward and down, her curly blonde hair tumbling over her head to brush the ground.

“Now imagine 50 people in a room doing that during a fucking pandemic,” she says.

Thomas, 26, observed this scene in a Scottsdale yoga studio in early June, as Arizona was making headlines as the country’s latest COVID-19 hotspot. The first week of June, the state saw a 54 percent increase in new cases over the previous week, with ICU beds surpassing 80 percent capacity.

Thomas — who is, full disclosure, my fiancé’s sister, whom I saw on a family visit to Virginia in early July — taught online classes throughout the first months of the pandemic. Three or four nights a week, I would log onto Zoom from my apartment in Brooklyn to follow her through an hour of “Energized Vinyasa” or “Slow Flow.” In the void of normalcy that was quarantine, those hours on the mat were bright spots on the horizon of each day. And when things finally started re-opening in Phoenix mid-May, she agreed to teach some in-studio classes in the non-heated room at Hot Yoga University (HYU). 

“The non-heated room was very small. Like, when we re-opened I would have one person in my class, maybe two,” Thomas says. “And HYU had made an announcement that they were following CDC guidelines — everyone six feet apart, masks inside, sanitized, touchless check-in, etc. But then you go in and there are 48 people in the hot room, not six feet apart, breathing all over each other. I was standing by the front desk when a lady walked out and said, ‘You guys are not following CDC guidelines. I want my money back. You’re blatantly putting people at risk.’”

Related: 5 Reasons to Start a Yoga Routine While You’re Social Distancing

HYU’s owner, Karin Fellman, was teaching the class the student walked out of, and later had a conversation with Thomas about the mask-wearing policy. “She made this comment about how she refuses to support any business that requires you to wear a mask inside,” Thomas says. “So that’s when my eyes were kind of opened.”

Soon after, Thomas told Fellman she didn’t feel comfortable teaching classes at HYU anymore, and parted ways with the studio. In the following weeks she began to hear — through other HYU teachers — that numerous teachers and students had tested positive. The studio continued operating on a regular class schedule until June 28, when an email was sent out with the subject line: “In Response to COVID-19.”

I went to a class at HYU a few years ago on a trip to Phoenix, so was on the studio’s mailing list and received the email. “Like most businesses in Scottsdale,” it read, “we have had some people come forward and inform us they have tested positive. The most recent person received their test result today. The last day they were at the studio was June 16th.” The email went on to say the studio would be closing down to disinfect and would reopen July 5. 

But on June 29, the day after HYU sent out their email, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order mandating that the state’s gyms, bars, theaters, waterparks and inner-tubing businesses close for 30 days (on July 23 he extended the order indefinitely). On July 1, HYU announced that in light of the second shut-down order, the studio would be closing permanently.

“The fatigue… simply became too great”

I reached out to HYU’s owner, Fellman, to get her account of what had happened in the weeks between re-opening in May and closing down at the end of June. She maintains that the studio followed all CDC guidelines throughout the period of re-opening. “I do remember one student who left because she felt it was too crowded,” Fellman told me in an email. “I spoke to her before class explaining that the squares on the floor where yogis put their mats down were 6 feet apart following the CDC guidelines and if they were (husband/wife etc.) they could practice closer together. I think that was what she saw near her and was uncomfortable.”

Fellman says that the ultimate decision to shut down was because, “At a certain point, it became obvious we could not guarantee students would not be exposed to someone if they attended class,” she said. “We could not control where people had been before class, or where they worked. Many of our students and teachers worked with the public and exposure was inevitable. At the time we closed we had three confirmed cases and after closing we had members of our community reach out with additional positive tests results, reaffirming our decision to close. The mental, emotional, and spiritual fatigue with providing a safe environment and at the same time trying to ease those who were fearful, simply became too great.”

Of course, these difficult calculations are not unique to HYU. And although some yoga studios in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area have taken the threat of COVID-19 very seriously and continued operating virtually throughout the pandemic, a number also resumed normal class schedules as quickly as possible and even defied executive orders to shut back down. These decisions aren’t just happening in Phoenix, of course; in cities across the country, some studios are opting to offer in-studio classes while others are remaining virtual. 

A document recently prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force lists 18 states as being in the “red zone” (10 percent or higher positive test rate) for COVID-19 cases. The experts who prepared the report recommended that those states close down bars and gyms immediately, require masks be worn at all times and limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer. The report also offers data on the three counties in each state with the highest number of cases. We looked at those three counties in all 18 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — and found multiple yoga studios offering in-studio classes in 48 of 54 counties. The exceptions were in North Carolina and Southern California, where gyms have been ordered to close (though multiple studios in Orange County still appear to still be offering in-studio classes) and the county of Elko, Nevada, which seems to have only one yoga studio. 

To be fair, these studios are mostly small, independent businesses doing everything they can to survive, and their state governments are permitting them to stay open. The majority claim to be following CDC guidelines with limited class sizes and social distancing, along with virtual or livestream options. But in most counties, for every studio offering indoor classes, there is one or more that have opted to stay entirely virtual — or to offer only outdoor classes. This suggests that a significant portion of the yoga community believes the right thing is to stop offering in-studio classes regardless of whether they are legally permitted. There are obvious exposure risks in the physical practice of yoga — a form of exercise that involves heavy breathwork — so for studio owners hoping for their business interests and core yogic values to align, this virus presents an ethically murky dilemma. 

Throughout the pandemic, as the U.S. outbreak became the largest in the world, there have been conversations about the downsides of America’s robust strain of individualism. The necessity of considering what’s best for the larger collective, as opposed to yourself and your bottom line, has been a tough pill for many Americans to swallow. But it’s particularly interesting to observe this playing out in the yoga universe, rooted as it is in Eastern philosophy, with its emphasis on mindfulness and the collective good. Every person I spoke to for this story mentioned yoga’s guiding principle of “ahimsa” — meaning “nonviolence,” or “do no harm.”

So, what are the motivating factors and viewpoints of studio owners who are dead-set on opening? Are there any circumstances under which it could be truly safe to practice inside while this virus is still a threat? And if yoga is a business like anything else, what does its future look like in a country that is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic normalcy anytime soon? Will it look like these studios, resisting change and hoping for the best, or will it look like those who lean into the unknown and seek out opportunities to innovate?

“We’ve been forced to pull our in-studio offering”

Back in Phoenix, following Governor Ducey’s June 29 executive order for gyms to shut down, HYU decided to close for good. But meanwhile, other studios in the area were telling students that they were planning to stay open, because they considered themselves exempt from the “gym” category.

Radi8 Hot Yoga, for example, posted an Instagram update on June 30 saying that it was  staying open despite the executive order, with the following justification: “After further review of the Governor’s mandate, it is our interpretation that we do not fall under ‘Gyms’ as we are a boutique studio with set class times allowing for full social distancing and space between each student. We will continue our elevated cleaning procedures, touchless check in, socially distanced mat markers, deep clean between each class, and require all students to wear masks on the way in and out of the studio.” Per its website, it appears to have offered a full schedule of in-studio classes through July 15 (Radi8 did not respond to our requests for comment).  

Yoga 6, a California-based franchise with two locations in Arizona, also stayed open in defiance of the executive order until July 7, when the Scottsdale location received a visit from law enforcement. “We have some disappointing news to share,” it wrote on the studio’s local Instagram account later that day. “Unfortunately, due to the recent local ordinance, we have been forced to pull our in-studio offering for the time being. While we don’t agree with the decision to lump us into the same category as ‘gyms’ (given we are smaller and no one moves stations or shares equipment, have special UVC germicidal lights, and enhanced cleaning standards), we will respect the order while we petition to be allowed to safely reopen.” 

Related: A Men’s Yoga Brand Learns the Real Meaning of Flexibility

On July 13, Yoga 6 and its parent company Xponential Fitness — which also includes Club Pilates, Pure Barre, AKT and CycleBar — sued the Arizona governor for requiring its various brand locations in the state to close for 30 days. On July 14, an Arizona judge ruled against the company. Kate Kwon, the VP of communications at Xponential, told Entrepreneur that the lawsuit was filed because  it believed there wasn’t sufficient evidence showing that gyms contributed to the spread of the virus. “We reopened with extensive health and safety procedures in place and as you mentioned, felt the executive order was arbitrary in nature including gyms and fitness centers,” Kwon said in an email. “No data was referenced to show gyms and fitness centers were contributing to the spread of COVID19 so we simply wanted to understand how they got to the conclusion to include all fitness.”

Is it ever safe to practice yoga inside?

Ingrid Yang is a hospital physician based in San Diego who has been working on the frontlines of the pandemic. She has also been a yoga teacher for over 20 years and is the author of two books, Hatha Yoga Asanas (2012) and Adaptive Yoga (forthcoming in November 2020). As a former studio owner herself, Yang is sympathetic to studios trying to navigate the pandemic. But she also says that from a medical perspective, doing yoga classes indoors — even with mats placed six feet or more apart — is an undeniable risk. 

“It is hard to maintain strict distancing and mask adherence, even for the most educated of us, and it is simply impossible to ensure that you are creating an environment that is transmission-free,” Yang says. “If I still owned my yoga center, I would have a hard time justifying opening. People in America are welcome to make their own decisions and take on their own risk, but maybe they aren’t asking themselves the right questions: Do you have to go to that yoga class? Will your life end if you don’t go to that yoga class? Well, yours might not, but someone else’s might.”

Dr. Ingrid Yang, practicing pandemic yoga // Image credit: Colin Gazley

In enclosed spaces, even if all social distancing precautions are taken, the most dangerous factor is likely to be aerosolized transmission. Recent research suggests that tiny virus particles can hang in the air for a significant period of time, particularly in enclosed spaces.

“In yoga, the technique ‘ujjayi’ breathing is utilized, which is used to both elongate and deepen the breath,” Yang says. “So maybe you’re six feet apart, but if you’re next to someone who is asymptomatic, and they’re inevitably breathing more heavily — because their heart rate is up and they are requiring more oxygen to their muscles — they will be taking in bigger, deeper breaths that may create more aerosolized droplets. And you’re taking in longer, more elongated breaths with more volume of air, so you’re more at risk for taking in their droplets.” 

Yang does think the use of UVC lights — which Yoga 6 purports to use — in yoga studios is an interesting innovation, and promising research has been done around UV radiation’s ability to kill the virus under specific conditions. But there are simply still so many unknowns that it’s impossible to guarantee a safe experience. “Based on the research we have, the SARS‑CoV can be inactivated by UV radiation at 254 nm (UVC or 200–280 nm), with partial viral inactivation at one minute and increasing efficacy up to six minutes,” Yang says. “But research and our discoveries are changing all the time. There’s still so much we don’t know … so the continued unknown risks may not be worth the benefit for many yogis.”

The majority of studios I’ve come across during research have been asking yogis to wear masks to and from their mats, but not while they’re actually practicing. Yang acknowledges the difficulties that studios face in asking customers to wear masks throughout the class. “When you’re a business owner, the customer’s always right. Most customers say, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask while I’m exercising or practicing yoga because it’s uncomfortable.’ You can’t control someone who just takes off their mask in Shavasana to get a deep breath in.”

Kim, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher who asked to be identified by her first name, says it’s definitely been uncomfortable interacting with students who don’t want to wear masks. “It’s just been really hard to maneuver, because people would show up for classes and there will be a sign that says, ‘You have to wear a mask.’ But they come in without one like, ‘What?’ You feel like a jerk saying, ‘Sorry you need to go out and put a face covering and then you’re free to come back in.’ I had a student who left and didn’t come back. I was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s your call.’ It’s just changing everything.”

Doubt, denial and God-complexes

What Kim has found more unsettling than awkward interactions with students, however, are the underlying reasons for some students’ and studios’ resistance to COVID-19 safety precautions. “There are conspiracy theories that have been growing within the yoga community,” she says. “Like, some students and teachers think that the pandemic is a hoax — a political angle to try to get people to vote a certain way. They think that wearing a mask kind of puts you in a certain group, like you’re a Democrat, or you’re a Republican or liberal or whatever. My personal opinion is that it’s a coping mechanism, like, ‘Oh, this isn’t really happening.’ It’s a form of denial, because they would have to stop doing what they want to do. But I’m willing to bet that every studio has had cases or teachers that have come down sick. I mean, it’s like wildfire here.”

A somewhat blatant example of this was on July 4, when Radi8 and Yoga 6, two Phoenix studios that were open despite the executive order to close, posted their in-studio class schedules to their Instagram pages along with the same quote: “May we think of freedom as not the right to do what we please, but the opportunity to do what is right.” 

For her part, Thomas thinks that there are some teachers who suffer from misguided feelings of invincibility, which can feed into attitudes of denial. “I totally get that survival mode is kicking in for these studio owners,” she says. “But there is almost like a God complex that a lot of popular yoga teachers get, knowing that if they stay open, their students will come. Maybe it’s denial, but teachers have a real responsibility to educate themselves and their students.”

Leah Bosworth is the owner of Ironwood Yoga Studios in Phoenix, where Thomas teaches now. Ironwood has stayed fully virtual since the pandemic began, but Bosworth says she is aware of some local studios that buy into these conspiracy-type perspectives. She thinks much of it comes from a place of fear and difficulty imagining another way of doing things.

“I think people are attached to the idea that they started with, and understandably so,” she says. “I’ve heard from a few studio owner friends that ‘this just wasn’t what I signed up for.’ And rent is a huge thing. I have heard many upsetting stories about landlords who are not forgiving at all. Taking a brick and mortar studio online with all of your teachers is quite complex… To make [a virtual model] viable long-term it is truly like starting another business. I think for a lot of studio owners the idea of starting over is just too much, so the only path they see forward is in-person or bust.”

Finding clarity, accepting reality and embracing change

For Bosworth, the decision to keep building and perfecting her studio’s virtual offering boiled down to the fact that when she looked reality square in the face, it was the only way forward that was clear. 

“I kind of figured out really quickly that nobody really knows what’s going on,” she says. “So I had to do what I thought was right in my gut. We closed down in March and immediately, two days later, shifted to doing whatever we could online, which was Facebook Live at the time. But it took us about 20 days of nonstop scrambling to get it together. Figuring out how to do a platform and delivery and all of that stuff is an enormous undertaking.”

Leah Bosworth teaching a virtual session at Ironwood Yoga Studios // Image credit: Leah Bosworth

But Bosworth says part of the reason she was probably more open to shifting entirely online was that before she started Ironwood, she had done a lot of research into starting an online health and wellness brand. So she saw the “possibilities and creativity” of a virtual studio.

“As I was doing my research and working with my web designer, this little voice in my head kept saying, ‘Online is the future for yoga studios and gyms,’” she says. “Because nothing [about the pandemic] has actually changed. People are just opening because the economy is going to collapse if we don’t. But from a business perspective, I can’t grow my studio if there are only eight people in the room. From a safety perspective, it’s going to put my community at risk. And from a yoga perspective, I wanted to keep that clarity for everyone when everything else was uncertain. I didn’t want to go back and forth. I wanted to practice ‘ahimsa,’ not causing harm to the community. So I just thought, let’s commit to this.”

The commitment has paid off. Ironwood’s virtual attendance has stayed steady since March, and even grown some recently. “I’ve got my pricing options in place, and now I’m shifting into marketing agency,” she says. “I just invested in a bunch of video equipment. I’m trying to uplevel everything so we can compete with what’s out there. Quality has always been really important to me, and how you deliver makes a big difference in engagement for people.” 

Yang says that because this virus isn’t going away anytime soon, this perspective is likely to be the long-term winning approach. “Yoga centers have become innovative with providing online yoga classes,” she says. “That’s the best and most important way that studios can stay connected and continue to generate income. Now is the time for every yoga studio owner to become a true entrepreneur and to utilize the power of social media to maintain their revenue streams and their connection to their student base.”

Bosworth says that, of course, she is not blind to what is lost by not practicing in-person with her students. A big part of the yoga experience has traditionally been about holding space in a room with others. But ultimately, she thinks that the way yogis conceptualize community right now has to be bigger than the community of one yoga class.

“What I’ve been saying to our students and teachers — and basically to myself — is that we just have to put aside our preferences right now,” she says. “No, it’s not ideal for me to teach to a camera in an empty room. But it’s not really about us right now. It’s about the community taking care of each other in this time and being open to doing something differently. People build communities online all the time, and at the end of the day it’s about, did you practice yoga today? I’ve certainly thought of giving up, but ultimately, I’m sort of excited by this opportunity to transcend this disaster. I guess I like a good challenge. I’m weird like that.”

Related: Workplace Wellness Isn’t Just for Big Corporations. Here’s How …

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/whats-up-with-open-yoga-studios-in-covid-19-hotspots/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/07/whats-up-with-open-yoga-studios-in.html

[riichardwilson]

What’s Up With Open Yoga Studios in COVID-19 Hotspots?

July 28, 2020 15+ min read

“Okay. So, the ‘Breath of Joy’ is a practice we would do at the beginning of every Hatha class, which involves a very heavy open mouth exhalation. It’s a three-part inhale through the nose with corresponding arm movements.” 

Mimi Thomas, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher, is sitting on a patio in a maroon floral beach cover-up. She stands to demonstrate.

“Inhale one, arms out in front of you,” she says. “Inhale two, arms come out wide. Inhale three, filling your lungs all the way to the top, arms up, biceps by the ears. And as you exhale, open your mouth and go, ‘Haaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.’” As she exhales, she swings her upper body forward and down, her curly blonde hair tumbling over her head to brush the ground.

“Now imagine 50 people in a room doing that during a fucking pandemic,” she says.

Thomas, 26, observed this scene in a Scottsdale yoga studio in early June, as Arizona was making headlines as the country’s latest COVID-19 hotspot. The first week of June, the state saw a 54 percent increase in new cases over the previous week, with ICU beds surpassing 80 percent capacity.

Thomas — who is, full disclosure, my fiancé’s sister, whom I saw on a family visit to Virginia in early July — taught online classes throughout the first months of the pandemic. Three or four nights a week, I would log onto Zoom from my apartment in Brooklyn to follow her through an hour of “Energized Vinyasa” or “Slow Flow.” In the void of normalcy that was quarantine, those hours on the mat were bright spots on the horizon of each day. And when things finally started re-opening in Phoenix mid-May, she agreed to teach some in-studio classes in the non-heated room at Hot Yoga University (HYU). 

“The non-heated room was very small. Like, when we re-opened I would have one person in my class, maybe two,” Thomas says. “And HYU had made an announcement that they were following CDC guidelines — everyone six feet apart, masks inside, sanitized, touchless check-in, etc. But then you go in and there are 48 people in the hot room, not six feet apart, breathing all over each other. I was standing by the front desk when a lady walked out and said, ‘You guys are not following CDC guidelines. I want my money back. You’re blatantly putting people at risk.’”

Related: 5 Reasons to Start a Yoga Routine While You’re Social Distancing

HYU’s owner, Karin Fellman, was teaching the class the student walked out of, and later had a conversation with Thomas about the mask-wearing policy. “She made this comment about how she refuses to support any business that requires you to wear a mask inside,” Thomas says. “So that’s when my eyes were kind of opened.”

Soon after, Thomas told Fellman she didn’t feel comfortable teaching classes at HYU anymore, and parted ways with the studio. In the following weeks she began to hear — through other HYU teachers — that numerous teachers and students had tested positive. The studio continued operating on a regular class schedule until June 28, when an email was sent out with the subject line: “In Response to COVID-19.”

I went to a class at HYU a few years ago on a trip to Phoenix, so was on the studio’s mailing list and received the email. “Like most businesses in Scottsdale,” it read, “we have had some people come forward and inform us they have tested positive. The most recent person received their test result today. The last day they were at the studio was June 16th.” The email went on to say the studio would be closing down to disinfect and would reopen July 5. 

But on June 29, the day after HYU sent out their email, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order mandating that the state’s gyms, bars, theaters, waterparks and inner-tubing businesses close for 30 days (on July 23 he extended the order indefinitely). On July 1, HYU announced that in light of the second shut-down order, the studio would be closing permanently.

“The fatigue… simply became too great”

I reached out to HYU’s owner, Fellman, to get her account of what had happened in the weeks between re-opening in May and closing down at the end of June. She maintains that the studio followed all CDC guidelines throughout the period of re-opening. “I do remember one student who left because she felt it was too crowded,” Fellman told me in an email. “I spoke to her before class explaining that the squares on the floor where yogis put their mats down were 6 feet apart following the CDC guidelines and if they were (husband/wife etc.) they could practice closer together. I think that was what she saw near her and was uncomfortable.”

Fellman says that the ultimate decision to shut down was because, “At a certain point, it became obvious we could not guarantee students would not be exposed to someone if they attended class,” she said. “We could not control where people had been before class, or where they worked. Many of our students and teachers worked with the public and exposure was inevitable. At the time we closed we had three confirmed cases and after closing we had members of our community reach out with additional positive tests results, reaffirming our decision to close. The mental, emotional, and spiritual fatigue with providing a safe environment and at the same time trying to ease those who were fearful, simply became too great.”

Of course, these difficult calculations are not unique to HYU. And although some yoga studios in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area have taken the threat of COVID-19 very seriously and continued operating virtually throughout the pandemic, a number also resumed normal class schedules as quickly as possible and even defied executive orders to shut back down. These decisions aren’t just happening in Phoenix, of course; in cities across the country, some studios are opting to offer in-studio classes while others are remaining virtual. 

A document recently prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force lists 18 states as being in the “red zone” (10 percent or higher positive test rate) for COVID-19 cases. The experts who prepared the report recommended that those states close down bars and gyms immediately, require masks be worn at all times and limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer. The report also offers data on the three counties in each state with the highest number of cases. We looked at those three counties in all 18 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — and found multiple yoga studios offering in-studio classes in 48 of 54 counties. The exceptions were in North Carolina and Southern California, where gyms have been ordered to close (though multiple studios in Orange County still appear to still be offering in-studio classes) and the county of Elko, Nevada, which seems to have only one yoga studio. 

To be fair, these studios are mostly small, independent businesses doing everything they can to survive, and their state governments are permitting them to stay open. The majority claim to be following CDC guidelines with limited class sizes and social distancing, along with virtual or livestream options. But in most counties, for every studio offering indoor classes, there is one or more that have opted to stay entirely virtual — or to offer only outdoor classes. This suggests that a significant portion of the yoga community believes the right thing is to stop offering in-studio classes regardless of whether they are legally permitted. There are obvious exposure risks in the physical practice of yoga — a form of exercise that involves heavy breathwork — so for studio owners hoping for their business interests and core yogic values to align, this virus presents an ethically murky dilemma. 

Throughout the pandemic, as the U.S. outbreak became the largest in the world, there have been conversations about the downsides of America’s robust strain of individualism. The necessity of considering what’s best for the larger collective, as opposed to yourself and your bottom line, has been a tough pill for many Americans to swallow. But it’s particularly interesting to observe this playing out in the yoga universe, rooted as it is in Eastern philosophy, with its emphasis on mindfulness and the collective good. Every person I spoke to for this story mentioned yoga’s guiding principle of “ahimsa” — meaning “nonviolence,” or “do no harm.”

So, what are the motivating factors and viewpoints of studio owners who are dead-set on opening? Are there any circumstances under which it could be truly safe to practice inside while this virus is still a threat? And if yoga is a business like anything else, what does its future look like in a country that is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic normalcy anytime soon? Will it look like these studios, resisting change and hoping for the best, or will it look like those who lean into the unknown and seek out opportunities to innovate?

“We’ve been forced to pull our in-studio offering”

Back in Phoenix, following Governor Ducey’s June 29 executive order for gyms to shut down, HYU decided to close for good. But meanwhile, other studios in the area were telling students that they were planning to stay open, because they considered themselves exempt from the “gym” category.

Radi8 Hot Yoga, for example, posted an Instagram update on June 30 saying that it was  staying open despite the executive order, with the following justification: “After further review of the Governor’s mandate, it is our interpretation that we do not fall under ‘Gyms’ as we are a boutique studio with set class times allowing for full social distancing and space between each student. We will continue our elevated cleaning procedures, touchless check in, socially distanced mat markers, deep clean between each class, and require all students to wear masks on the way in and out of the studio.” Per its website, it appears to have offered a full schedule of in-studio classes through July 15 (Radi8 did not respond to our requests for comment).  

Yoga 6, a California-based franchise with two locations in Arizona, also stayed open in defiance of the executive order until July 7, when the Scottsdale location received a visit from law enforcement. “We have some disappointing news to share,” it wrote on the studio’s local Instagram account later that day. “Unfortunately, due to the recent local ordinance, we have been forced to pull our in-studio offering for the time being. While we don’t agree with the decision to lump us into the same category as ‘gyms’ (given we are smaller and no one moves stations or shares equipment, have special UVC germicidal lights, and enhanced cleaning standards), we will respect the order while we petition to be allowed to safely reopen.” 

Related: A Men’s Yoga Brand Learns the Real Meaning of Flexibility

On July 13, Yoga 6 and its parent company Xponential Fitness — which also includes Club Pilates, Pure Barre, AKT and CycleBar — sued the Arizona governor for requiring its various brand locations in the state to close for 30 days. On July 14, an Arizona judge ruled against the company. Kate Kwon, the VP of communications at Xponential, told Entrepreneur that the lawsuit was filed because  it believed there wasn’t sufficient evidence showing that gyms contributed to the spread of the virus. “We reopened with extensive health and safety procedures in place and as you mentioned, felt the executive order was arbitrary in nature including gyms and fitness centers,” Kwon said in an email. “No data was referenced to show gyms and fitness centers were contributing to the spread of COVID19 so we simply wanted to understand how they got to the conclusion to include all fitness.”

Is it ever safe to practice yoga inside?

Ingrid Yang is a hospital physician based in San Diego who has been working on the frontlines of the pandemic. She has also been a yoga teacher for over 20 years and is the author of two books, Hatha Yoga Asanas (2012) and Adaptive Yoga (forthcoming in November 2020). As a former studio owner herself, Yang is sympathetic to studios trying to navigate the pandemic. But she also says that from a medical perspective, doing yoga classes indoors — even with mats placed six feet or more apart — is an undeniable risk. 

“It is hard to maintain strict distancing and mask adherence, even for the most educated of us, and it is simply impossible to ensure that you are creating an environment that is transmission-free,” Yang says. “If I still owned my yoga center, I would have a hard time justifying opening. People in America are welcome to make their own decisions and take on their own risk, but maybe they aren’t asking themselves the right questions: Do you have to go to that yoga class? Will your life end if you don’t go to that yoga class? Well, yours might not, but someone else’s might.”

Dr. Ingrid Yang, practicing pandemic yoga // Image credit: Colin Gazley

In enclosed spaces, even if all social distancing precautions are taken, the most dangerous factor is likely to be aerosolized transmission. Recent research suggests that tiny virus particles can hang in the air for a significant period of time, particularly in enclosed spaces.

“In yoga, the technique ‘ujjayi’ breathing is utilized, which is used to both elongate and deepen the breath,” Yang says. “So maybe you’re six feet apart, but if you’re next to someone who is asymptomatic, and they’re inevitably breathing more heavily — because their heart rate is up and they are requiring more oxygen to their muscles — they will be taking in bigger, deeper breaths that may create more aerosolized droplets. And you’re taking in longer, more elongated breaths with more volume of air, so you’re more at risk for taking in their droplets.” 

Yang does think the use of UVC lights — which Yoga 6 purports to use — in yoga studios is an interesting innovation, and promising research has been done around UV radiation’s ability to kill the virus under specific conditions. But there are simply still so many unknowns that it’s impossible to guarantee a safe experience. “Based on the research we have, the SARS‑CoV can be inactivated by UV radiation at 254 nm (UVC or 200–280 nm), with partial viral inactivation at one minute and increasing efficacy up to six minutes,” Yang says. “But research and our discoveries are changing all the time. There’s still so much we don’t know … so the continued unknown risks may not be worth the benefit for many yogis.”

The majority of studios I’ve come across during research have been asking yogis to wear masks to and from their mats, but not while they’re actually practicing. Yang acknowledges the difficulties that studios face in asking customers to wear masks throughout the class. “When you’re a business owner, the customer’s always right. Most customers say, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask while I’m exercising or practicing yoga because it’s uncomfortable.’ You can’t control someone who just takes off their mask in Shavasana to get a deep breath in.”

Kim, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher who asked to be identified by her first name, says it’s definitely been uncomfortable interacting with students who don’t want to wear masks. “It’s just been really hard to maneuver, because people would show up for classes and there will be a sign that says, ‘You have to wear a mask.’ But they come in without one like, ‘What?’ You feel like a jerk saying, ‘Sorry you need to go out and put a face covering and then you’re free to come back in.’ I had a student who left and didn’t come back. I was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s your call.’ It’s just changing everything.”

Doubt, denial and God-complexes

What Kim has found more unsettling than awkward interactions with students, however, are the underlying reasons for some students’ and studios’ resistance to COVID-19 safety precautions. “There are conspiracy theories that have been growing within the yoga community,” she says. “Like, some students and teachers think that the pandemic is a hoax — a political angle to try to get people to vote a certain way. They think that wearing a mask kind of puts you in a certain group, like you’re a Democrat, or you’re a Republican or liberal or whatever. My personal opinion is that it’s a coping mechanism, like, ‘Oh, this isn’t really happening.’ It’s a form of denial, because they would have to stop doing what they want to do. But I’m willing to bet that every studio has had cases or teachers that have come down sick. I mean, it’s like wildfire here.”

A somewhat blatant example of this was on July 4, when Radi8 and Yoga 6, two Phoenix studios that were open despite the executive order to close, posted their in-studio class schedules to their Instagram pages along with the same quote: “May we think of freedom as not the right to do what we please, but the opportunity to do what is right.” 

For her part, Thomas thinks that there are some teachers who suffer from misguided feelings of invincibility, which can feed into attitudes of denial. “I totally get that survival mode is kicking in for these studio owners,” she says. “But there is almost like a God complex that a lot of popular yoga teachers get, knowing that if they stay open, their students will come. Maybe it’s denial, but teachers have a real responsibility to educate themselves and their students.”

Leah Bosworth is the owner of Ironwood Yoga Studios in Phoenix, where Thomas teaches now. Ironwood has stayed fully virtual since the pandemic began, but Bosworth says she is aware of some local studios that buy into these conspiracy-type perspectives. She thinks much of it comes from a place of fear and difficulty imagining another way of doing things.

“I think people are attached to the idea that they started with, and understandably so,” she says. “I’ve heard from a few studio owner friends that ‘this just wasn’t what I signed up for.’ And rent is a huge thing. I have heard many upsetting stories about landlords who are not forgiving at all. Taking a brick and mortar studio online with all of your teachers is quite complex… To make [a virtual model] viable long-term it is truly like starting another business. I think for a lot of studio owners the idea of starting over is just too much, so the only path they see forward is in-person or bust.”

Finding clarity, accepting reality and embracing change

For Bosworth, the decision to keep building and perfecting her studio’s virtual offering boiled down to the fact that when she looked reality square in the face, it was the only way forward that was clear. 

“I kind of figured out really quickly that nobody really knows what’s going on,” she says. “So I had to do what I thought was right in my gut. We closed down in March and immediately, two days later, shifted to doing whatever we could online, which was Facebook Live at the time. But it took us about 20 days of nonstop scrambling to get it together. Figuring out how to do a platform and delivery and all of that stuff is an enormous undertaking.”

Leah Bosworth teaching a virtual session at Ironwood Yoga Studios // Image credit: Leah Bosworth

But Bosworth says part of the reason she was probably more open to shifting entirely online was that before she started Ironwood, she had done a lot of research into starting an online health and wellness brand. So she saw the “possibilities and creativity” of a virtual studio.

“As I was doing my research and working with my web designer, this little voice in my head kept saying, ‘Online is the future for yoga studios and gyms,’” she says. “Because nothing [about the pandemic] has actually changed. People are just opening because the economy is going to collapse if we don’t. But from a business perspective, I can’t grow my studio if there are only eight people in the room. From a safety perspective, it’s going to put my community at risk. And from a yoga perspective, I wanted to keep that clarity for everyone when everything else was uncertain. I didn’t want to go back and forth. I wanted to practice ‘ahimsa,’ not causing harm to the community. So I just thought, let’s commit to this.”

The commitment has paid off. Ironwood’s virtual attendance has stayed steady since March, and even grown some recently. “I’ve got my pricing options in place, and now I’m shifting into marketing agency,” she says. “I just invested in a bunch of video equipment. I’m trying to uplevel everything so we can compete with what’s out there. Quality has always been really important to me, and how you deliver makes a big difference in engagement for people.” 

Yang says that because this virus isn’t going away anytime soon, this perspective is likely to be the long-term winning approach. “Yoga centers have become innovative with providing online yoga classes,” she says. “That’s the best and most important way that studios can stay connected and continue to generate income. Now is the time for every yoga studio owner to become a true entrepreneur and to utilize the power of social media to maintain their revenue streams and their connection to their student base.”

Bosworth says that, of course, she is not blind to what is lost by not practicing in-person with her students. A big part of the yoga experience has traditionally been about holding space in a room with others. But ultimately, she thinks that the way yogis conceptualize community right now has to be bigger than the community of one yoga class.

“What I’ve been saying to our students and teachers — and basically to myself — is that we just have to put aside our preferences right now,” she says. “No, it’s not ideal for me to teach to a camera in an empty room. But it’s not really about us right now. It’s about the community taking care of each other in this time and being open to doing something differently. People build communities online all the time, and at the end of the day it’s about, did you practice yoga today? I’ve certainly thought of giving up, but ultimately, I’m sort of excited by this opportunity to transcend this disaster. I guess I like a good challenge. I’m weird like that.”

Related: Workplace Wellness Isn’t Just for Big Corporations. Here’s How …

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/whats-up-with-open-yoga-studios-in-covid-19-hotspots/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/624951124789772288

[scpie]

What’s Up With Open Yoga Studios in COVID-19 Hotspots?

July 28, 2020 15+ min read

“Okay. So, the ‘Breath of Joy’ is a practice we would do at the beginning of every Hatha class, which involves a very heavy open mouth exhalation. It’s a three-part inhale through the nose with corresponding arm movements.” 

Mimi Thomas, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher, is sitting on a patio in a maroon floral beach cover-up. She stands to demonstrate.

“Inhale one, arms out in front of you,” she says. “Inhale two, arms come out wide. Inhale three, filling your lungs all the way to the top, arms up, biceps by the ears. And as you exhale, open your mouth and go, ‘Haaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh.’” As she exhales, she swings her upper body forward and down, her curly blonde hair tumbling over her head to brush the ground.

“Now imagine 50 people in a room doing that during a fucking pandemic,” she says.

Thomas, 26, observed this scene in a Scottsdale yoga studio in early June, as Arizona was making headlines as the country’s latest COVID-19 hotspot. The first week of June, the state saw a 54 percent increase in new cases over the previous week, with ICU beds surpassing 80 percent capacity.

Thomas — who is, full disclosure, my fiancé’s sister, whom I saw on a family visit to Virginia in early July — taught online classes throughout the first months of the pandemic. Three or four nights a week, I would log onto Zoom from my apartment in Brooklyn to follow her through an hour of “Energized Vinyasa” or “Slow Flow.” In the void of normalcy that was quarantine, those hours on the mat were bright spots on the horizon of each day. And when things finally started re-opening in Phoenix mid-May, she agreed to teach some in-studio classes in the non-heated room at Hot Yoga University (HYU). 

“The non-heated room was very small. Like, when we re-opened I would have one person in my class, maybe two,” Thomas says. “And HYU had made an announcement that they were following CDC guidelines — everyone six feet apart, masks inside, sanitized, touchless check-in, etc. But then you go in and there are 48 people in the hot room, not six feet apart, breathing all over each other. I was standing by the front desk when a lady walked out and said, ‘You guys are not following CDC guidelines. I want my money back. You’re blatantly putting people at risk.’”

Related: 5 Reasons to Start a Yoga Routine While You’re Social Distancing

HYU’s owner, Karin Fellman, was teaching the class the student walked out of, and later had a conversation with Thomas about the mask-wearing policy. “She made this comment about how she refuses to support any business that requires you to wear a mask inside,” Thomas says. “So that’s when my eyes were kind of opened.”

Soon after, Thomas told Fellman she didn’t feel comfortable teaching classes at HYU anymore, and parted ways with the studio. In the following weeks she began to hear — through other HYU teachers — that numerous teachers and students had tested positive. The studio continued operating on a regular class schedule until June 28, when an email was sent out with the subject line: “In Response to COVID-19.”

I went to a class at HYU a few years ago on a trip to Phoenix, so was on the studio’s mailing list and received the email. “Like most businesses in Scottsdale,” it read, “we have had some people come forward and inform us they have tested positive. The most recent person received their test result today. The last day they were at the studio was June 16th.” The email went on to say the studio would be closing down to disinfect and would reopen July 5. 

But on June 29, the day after HYU sent out their email, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed an executive order mandating that the state’s gyms, bars, theaters, waterparks and inner-tubing businesses close for 30 days (on July 23 he extended the order indefinitely). On July 1, HYU announced that in light of the second shut-down order, the studio would be closing permanently.

“The fatigue… simply became too great”

I reached out to HYU’s owner, Fellman, to get her account of what had happened in the weeks between re-opening in May and closing down at the end of June. She maintains that the studio followed all CDC guidelines throughout the period of re-opening. “I do remember one student who left because she felt it was too crowded,” Fellman told me in an email. “I spoke to her before class explaining that the squares on the floor where yogis put their mats down were 6 feet apart following the CDC guidelines and if they were (husband/wife etc.) they could practice closer together. I think that was what she saw near her and was uncomfortable.”

Fellman says that the ultimate decision to shut down was because, “At a certain point, it became obvious we could not guarantee students would not be exposed to someone if they attended class,” she said. “We could not control where people had been before class, or where they worked. Many of our students and teachers worked with the public and exposure was inevitable. At the time we closed we had three confirmed cases and after closing we had members of our community reach out with additional positive tests results, reaffirming our decision to close. The mental, emotional, and spiritual fatigue with providing a safe environment and at the same time trying to ease those who were fearful, simply became too great.”

Of course, these difficult calculations are not unique to HYU. And although some yoga studios in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area have taken the threat of COVID-19 very seriously and continued operating virtually throughout the pandemic, a number also resumed normal class schedules as quickly as possible and even defied executive orders to shut back down. These decisions aren’t just happening in Phoenix, of course; in cities across the country, some studios are opting to offer in-studio classes while others are remaining virtual. 

A document recently prepared for the White House Coronavirus Task Force lists 18 states as being in the “red zone” (10 percent or higher positive test rate) for COVID-19 cases. The experts who prepared the report recommended that those states close down bars and gyms immediately, require masks be worn at all times and limit gatherings to 10 people or fewer. The report also offers data on the three counties in each state with the highest number of cases. We looked at those three counties in all 18 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — and found multiple yoga studios offering in-studio classes in 48 of 54 counties. The exceptions were in North Carolina and Southern California, where gyms have been ordered to close (though multiple studios in Orange County still appear to still be offering in-studio classes) and the county of Elko, Nevada, which seems to have only one yoga studio. 

To be fair, these studios are mostly small, independent businesses doing everything they can to survive, and their state governments are permitting them to stay open. The majority claim to be following CDC guidelines with limited class sizes and social distancing, along with virtual or livestream options. But in most counties, for every studio offering indoor classes, there is one or more that have opted to stay entirely virtual — or to offer only outdoor classes. This suggests that a significant portion of the yoga community believes the right thing is to stop offering in-studio classes regardless of whether they are legally permitted. There are obvious exposure risks in the physical practice of yoga — a form of exercise that involves heavy breathwork — so for studio owners hoping for their business interests and core yogic values to align, this virus presents an ethically murky dilemma. 

Throughout the pandemic, as the U.S. outbreak became the largest in the world, there have been conversations about the downsides of America’s robust strain of individualism. The necessity of considering what’s best for the larger collective, as opposed to yourself and your bottom line, has been a tough pill for many Americans to swallow. But it’s particularly interesting to observe this playing out in the yoga universe, rooted as it is in Eastern philosophy, with its emphasis on mindfulness and the collective good. Every person I spoke to for this story mentioned yoga’s guiding principle of “ahimsa” — meaning “nonviolence,” or “do no harm.”

So, what are the motivating factors and viewpoints of studio owners who are dead-set on opening? Are there any circumstances under which it could be truly safe to practice inside while this virus is still a threat? And if yoga is a business like anything else, what does its future look like in a country that is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic normalcy anytime soon? Will it look like these studios, resisting change and hoping for the best, or will it look like those who lean into the unknown and seek out opportunities to innovate?

“We’ve been forced to pull our in-studio offering”

Back in Phoenix, following Governor Ducey’s June 29 executive order for gyms to shut down, HYU decided to close for good. But meanwhile, other studios in the area were telling students that they were planning to stay open, because they considered themselves exempt from the “gym” category.

Radi8 Hot Yoga, for example, posted an Instagram update on June 30 saying that it was  staying open despite the executive order, with the following justification: “After further review of the Governor’s mandate, it is our interpretation that we do not fall under ‘Gyms’ as we are a boutique studio with set class times allowing for full social distancing and space between each student. We will continue our elevated cleaning procedures, touchless check in, socially distanced mat markers, deep clean between each class, and require all students to wear masks on the way in and out of the studio.” Per its website, it appears to have offered a full schedule of in-studio classes through July 15 (Radi8 did not respond to our requests for comment).  

Yoga 6, a California-based franchise with two locations in Arizona, also stayed open in defiance of the executive order until July 7, when the Scottsdale location received a visit from law enforcement. “We have some disappointing news to share,” it wrote on the studio’s local Instagram account later that day. “Unfortunately, due to the recent local ordinance, we have been forced to pull our in-studio offering for the time being. While we don’t agree with the decision to lump us into the same category as ‘gyms’ (given we are smaller and no one moves stations or shares equipment, have special UVC germicidal lights, and enhanced cleaning standards), we will respect the order while we petition to be allowed to safely reopen.” 

Related: A Men’s Yoga Brand Learns the Real Meaning of Flexibility

On July 13, Yoga 6 and its parent company Xponential Fitness — which also includes Club Pilates, Pure Barre, AKT and CycleBar — sued the Arizona governor for requiring its various brand locations in the state to close for 30 days. On July 14, an Arizona judge ruled against the company. Kate Kwon, the VP of communications at Xponential, told Entrepreneur that the lawsuit was filed because  it believed there wasn’t sufficient evidence showing that gyms contributed to the spread of the virus. “We reopened with extensive health and safety procedures in place and as you mentioned, felt the executive order was arbitrary in nature including gyms and fitness centers,” Kwon said in an email. “No data was referenced to show gyms and fitness centers were contributing to the spread of COVID19 so we simply wanted to understand how they got to the conclusion to include all fitness.”

Is it ever safe to practice yoga inside?

Ingrid Yang is a hospital physician based in San Diego who has been working on the frontlines of the pandemic. She has also been a yoga teacher for over 20 years and is the author of two books, Hatha Yoga Asanas (2012) and Adaptive Yoga (forthcoming in November 2020). As a former studio owner herself, Yang is sympathetic to studios trying to navigate the pandemic. But she also says that from a medical perspective, doing yoga classes indoors — even with mats placed six feet or more apart — is an undeniable risk. 

“It is hard to maintain strict distancing and mask adherence, even for the most educated of us, and it is simply impossible to ensure that you are creating an environment that is transmission-free,” Yang says. “If I still owned my yoga center, I would have a hard time justifying opening. People in America are welcome to make their own decisions and take on their own risk, but maybe they aren’t asking themselves the right questions: Do you have to go to that yoga class? Will your life end if you don’t go to that yoga class? Well, yours might not, but someone else’s might.”

Dr. Ingrid Yang, practicing pandemic yoga // Image credit: Colin Gazley

In enclosed spaces, even if all social distancing precautions are taken, the most dangerous factor is likely to be aerosolized transmission. Recent research suggests that tiny virus particles can hang in the air for a significant period of time, particularly in enclosed spaces.

“In yoga, the technique ‘ujjayi’ breathing is utilized, which is used to both elongate and deepen the breath,” Yang says. “So maybe you’re six feet apart, but if you’re next to someone who is asymptomatic, and they’re inevitably breathing more heavily — because their heart rate is up and they are requiring more oxygen to their muscles — they will be taking in bigger, deeper breaths that may create more aerosolized droplets. And you’re taking in longer, more elongated breaths with more volume of air, so you’re more at risk for taking in their droplets.” 

Yang does think the use of UVC lights — which Yoga 6 purports to use — in yoga studios is an interesting innovation, and promising research has been done around UV radiation’s ability to kill the virus under specific conditions. But there are simply still so many unknowns that it’s impossible to guarantee a safe experience. “Based on the research we have, the SARS‑CoV can be inactivated by UV radiation at 254 nm (UVC or 200–280 nm), with partial viral inactivation at one minute and increasing efficacy up to six minutes,” Yang says. “But research and our discoveries are changing all the time. There’s still so much we don’t know … so the continued unknown risks may not be worth the benefit for many yogis.”

The majority of studios I’ve come across during research have been asking yogis to wear masks to and from their mats, but not while they’re actually practicing. Yang acknowledges the difficulties that studios face in asking customers to wear masks throughout the class. “When you’re a business owner, the customer’s always right. Most customers say, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask while I’m exercising or practicing yoga because it’s uncomfortable.’ You can’t control someone who just takes off their mask in Shavasana to get a deep breath in.”

Kim, a Phoenix-based yoga teacher who asked to be identified by her first name, says it’s definitely been uncomfortable interacting with students who don’t want to wear masks. “It’s just been really hard to maneuver, because people would show up for classes and there will be a sign that says, ‘You have to wear a mask.’ But they come in without one like, ‘What?’ You feel like a jerk saying, ‘Sorry you need to go out and put a face covering and then you’re free to come back in.’ I had a student who left and didn’t come back. I was like, ‘Okay, well, that’s your call.’ It’s just changing everything.”

Doubt, denial and God-complexes

What Kim has found more unsettling than awkward interactions with students, however, are the underlying reasons for some students’ and studios’ resistance to COVID-19 safety precautions. “There are conspiracy theories that have been growing within the yoga community,” she says. “Like, some students and teachers think that the pandemic is a hoax — a political angle to try to get people to vote a certain way. They think that wearing a mask kind of puts you in a certain group, like you’re a Democrat, or you’re a Republican or liberal or whatever. My personal opinion is that it’s a coping mechanism, like, ‘Oh, this isn’t really happening.’ It’s a form of denial, because they would have to stop doing what they want to do. But I’m willing to bet that every studio has had cases or teachers that have come down sick. I mean, it’s like wildfire here.”

A somewhat blatant example of this was on July 4, when Radi8 and Yoga 6, two Phoenix studios that were open despite the executive order to close, posted their in-studio class schedules to their Instagram pages along with the same quote: “May we think of freedom as not the right to do what we please, but the opportunity to do what is right.” 

For her part, Thomas thinks that there are some teachers who suffer from misguided feelings of invincibility, which can feed into attitudes of denial. “I totally get that survival mode is kicking in for these studio owners,” she says. “But there is almost like a God complex that a lot of popular yoga teachers get, knowing that if they stay open, their students will come. Maybe it’s denial, but teachers have a real responsibility to educate themselves and their students.”

Leah Bosworth is the owner of Ironwood Yoga Studios in Phoenix, where Thomas teaches now. Ironwood has stayed fully virtual since the pandemic began, but Bosworth says she is aware of some local studios that buy into these conspiracy-type perspectives. She thinks much of it comes from a place of fear and difficulty imagining another way of doing things.

“I think people are attached to the idea that they started with, and understandably so,” she says. “I’ve heard from a few studio owner friends that ‘this just wasn’t what I signed up for.’ And rent is a huge thing. I have heard many upsetting stories about landlords who are not forgiving at all. Taking a brick and mortar studio online with all of your teachers is quite complex… To make [a virtual model] viable long-term it is truly like starting another business. I think for a lot of studio owners the idea of starting over is just too much, so the only path they see forward is in-person or bust.”

Finding clarity, accepting reality and embracing change

For Bosworth, the decision to keep building and perfecting her studio’s virtual offering boiled down to the fact that when she looked reality square in the face, it was the only way forward that was clear. 

“I kind of figured out really quickly that nobody really knows what’s going on,” she says. “So I had to do what I thought was right in my gut. We closed down in March and immediately, two days later, shifted to doing whatever we could online, which was Facebook Live at the time. But it took us about 20 days of nonstop scrambling to get it together. Figuring out how to do a platform and delivery and all of that stuff is an enormous undertaking.”

Leah Bosworth teaching a virtual session at Ironwood Yoga Studios // Image credit: Leah Bosworth

But Bosworth says part of the reason she was probably more open to shifting entirely online was that before she started Ironwood, she had done a lot of research into starting an online health and wellness brand. So she saw the “possibilities and creativity” of a virtual studio.

“As I was doing my research and working with my web designer, this little voice in my head kept saying, ‘Online is the future for yoga studios and gyms,’” she says. “Because nothing [about the pandemic] has actually changed. People are just opening because the economy is going to collapse if we don’t. But from a business perspective, I can’t grow my studio if there are only eight people in the room. From a safety perspective, it’s going to put my community at risk. And from a yoga perspective, I wanted to keep that clarity for everyone when everything else was uncertain. I didn’t want to go back and forth. I wanted to practice ‘ahimsa,’ not causing harm to the community. So I just thought, let’s commit to this.”

The commitment has paid off. Ironwood’s virtual attendance has stayed steady since March, and even grown some recently. “I’ve got my pricing options in place, and now I’m shifting into marketing agency,” she says. “I just invested in a bunch of video equipment. I’m trying to uplevel everything so we can compete with what’s out there. Quality has always been really important to me, and how you deliver makes a big difference in engagement for people.” 

Yang says that because this virus isn’t going away anytime soon, this perspective is likely to be the long-term winning approach. “Yoga centers have become innovative with providing online yoga classes,” she says. “That’s the best and most important way that studios can stay connected and continue to generate income. Now is the time for every yoga studio owner to become a true entrepreneur and to utilize the power of social media to maintain their revenue streams and their connection to their student base.”

Bosworth says that, of course, she is not blind to what is lost by not practicing in-person with her students. A big part of the yoga experience has traditionally been about holding space in a room with others. But ultimately, she thinks that the way yogis conceptualize community right now has to be bigger than the community of one yoga class.

“What I’ve been saying to our students and teachers — and basically to myself — is that we just have to put aside our preferences right now,” she says. “No, it’s not ideal for me to teach to a camera in an empty room. But it’s not really about us right now. It’s about the community taking care of each other in this time and being open to doing something differently. People build communities online all the time, and at the end of the day it’s about, did you practice yoga today? I’ve certainly thought of giving up, but ultimately, I’m sort of excited by this opportunity to transcend this disaster. I guess I like a good challenge. I’m weird like that.”

Related: Workplace Wellness Isn’t Just for Big Corporations. Here’s How …

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/whats-up-with-open-yoga-studios-in-covid-19-hotspots/

[brentrogers]

Podcast: What is Mindfulness?

  Is your mind constantly preoccupied with the past or the future? What if you could train your brain to just BE in the present moment? This is the essence of mindfulness — simply being in the here-and-now (not worrying about that stupid thing you said last week), and gently noticing your surroundings and thoughts without judgment. In today’s podcast, Jackie enlightens a skeptical Gabe of the value of practicing mindfulness and how it can be a very useful tool in his mental health tool box. And she’s armed with scientific facts to break him down.

When was the last time you truly listened to the rain, enjoyed a cup of coffee… or stopped to smell the roses? Tune in to hear how mindfulness can help you get rid of the mental static that causes so much anxiety.

(Transcript Available Below)

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

        Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Computer Generated Transcript for “Mindfulness” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Not Crazy Podcast. I’d like to introduce my co-host, Jackie.

Jackie: And that was my co-host, Gabe.

Gabe: Jackie, we are going to discuss mindfulness. And not surprisingly, I am not a big fan of mindfulness, probably because I’m a Gen Xer and have common sense.

Jackie: Oh. Oh. Shots fired. OK. Well, I guess that’s why this is a good topic, is because we don’t agree probably at all. I think mindfulness is an amazing tool. It’s wonderful. And everybody should be using it, just like therapy.

Gabe: It’s important to point out that just because Gabe Howard doesn’t like mindfulness doesn’t mean that Gabe Howard thinks that mindfulness is bad, should go away, or that people shouldn’t use it. I also don’t understand yoga. I will never do yoga. It’s scary to me. I would get wrapped up like a pretzel. But I’m not on a campaign to eliminate yoga. I’m not on a campaign to end mindfulness. It’s just everywhere. And it seems to be offered up as the solution to every problem until CBD oil came out. And then we sort of forgot about mindfulness for a little bit. But sincerely, it is everywhere.

Jackie: It is everywhere. And it’s not the solution to everything, but it is a solution to a lot of things. Not solution, it will aid a lot of things. Let’s be clear, it’s not going to solve world hunger, but it can make things better. Right? It’s helpful. It’s helpful. And it can. 

Gabe: It’s like taking a hot shower when you’re sick.

Jackie: It can get you to where you want to be, maybe a little bit faster. And let’s rewind for a minute, Gabe. Actually, before we jump into that, let’s talk about what is mindfulness. 

Gabe: Like from a technical definition?

Jackie: Yes.

Gabe: Not its new age bunk that is pointless.

Jackie: No. This is from Berkeley.edu. So.

Gabe: All right. I trust Berkeley.

Jackie: Berkeley. This is a really long definition. I’m just going to read a part of it, which says mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment through a gentle nurturing lens. I know you’re gonna say that’s bullshit.

Gabe: But I do struggle with this because it’s not. Who shouldn’t be aware of their body, right? I don’t think it’s bullshit to be aware of your body. I don’t think it’s bullshit to stop and smell the roses. I don’t think it’s bullshit to count to 10. I just think that all of this stuff existed and that people have been doing it for years and we didn’t put a name on it and give it like a culture surrounding it. I think maybe that’s what I have the problem with. Mindfulness used to be called stop and smell the roses. Mindfulness used to be called slow-down. Now all the sudden it’s like a new fangled thing that people think they just discovered. 

Jackie: Wrong. First of all, mindfulness is actually rooted in like Buddhist meditation, right? So it’s not a new fangled thing. It’s a thing that specifically in America we suck at. So yeah. Stop and smell the roses is the same thing. Take a moment. Pause is the same thing. But we didn’t do it. Nobody did it. And they definitely didn’t do it in a way that was long and meaningful. Yes. If you stop literally for a moment and smell the roses. Technically, that’s mindfulness. But do you get any of the benefits from a 0.5 second roses smell? No, you don’t.

Gabe: But don’t you? Now I’m going to defend mindfulness because I kind of disagree. Like when you said, do you get any benefit from a 0.5 second rose smell? Are you kidding? We never stop. First off, we don’t do things one at a time now. We invented multi-tasking, and that’s my generation. You know how I was making fun of your generation? Gen Xers invented, one thing at a time? No, multi-tasking is where it’s at. So we don’t stop and do anything for .05 seconds. So are you kidding? Like 0.5? That’s an improvement. So yeah, in that way, I agree with you. I just don’t think it’s mindfulness. I think it’s stopping to smell the fucking roses. 

Jackie: But it is mindfulness. It doesn’t hurt to put a title on it. Right. OK. Prime example. Have you ever gone to a friend and talked about a problem, Gabe?

Gabe: Yes.

Jackie: And isn’t that similar to what you do in therapy?

Gabe: I mean, except that therapy works on a scientific basis.

Jackie: So does mindfulness.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does. Would you like some facts?

Gabe: I would love some facts. The way that it is described, and I know that I’m old and I know that I’m crotchety. I know that I’m set in my ways. But I would love to read any article about mindfulness that doesn’t make it sound like bunk. I am open to the idea, Jackie, that it’s not, but it’s always so hippy dippy and flowery and it doesn’t seem to be based on anything. And I would like to point out that talking to your friends and therapy, while maybe on the same spectrum, are a world of difference. I don’t want everybody to avoid therapy because of, you know, Bob at the bar.

Jackie: No, but you can fit. Talking things out is helpful.

Gabe: Right.

Jackie: It has a name. It’s called therapy. When you’re doing with your friend, it’s not therapy, but like it fits under the idea of talking out your problems.

Gabe: Very true.

Jackie: Similarly in this situation. But here’s a fact. Ready to have your mind blown? Mindfulness changes our brains. This is still from Berkeley. Researchers found that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning memory, emotion, regulation and empathy.

Gabe: Give me an example of practicing mindfulness. What are we dealing with? You know, we use the example of stopping to smell the roses. And I know that that that is a mindfulness basis. But I can’t believe that stopping to smell the roses for 0.5 seconds or even five minutes a day, I can’t believe that that is changing gray matter in humans. It doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

Jackie: Well, as you might suspect, I strongly disagree with you again on this. Because you can’t tell me that over time, stopping to relax your brain, release stress, all the positive things that come out of something like mindfulness can’t change the chemistry in your brain. You’re telling me that if you’re on level 10 stress forever that your brain chemistry doesn’t change?

Gabe: I will cave immediately on that one. Because obviously when when I was in a state of perpetual depression, for example, that changed my brain. When I was in a state of perpetual mania, that changed my brain. So sometimes I do feel like I’m stuck in a semantics argument. Like I feel like I’m saying, hey, look, we need to be aware of our surroundings. We need to not live in this stress. We need to understand our limitations and we need to count to ten. We need to focus on our breathing. And I think that’s a good idea. People have heard me say this. And then your side fires back. Well, that’s mindfulness. And I immediately say no. How did we get here? Because one of the things that you said is that mindfulness came from Buddhism, which is which is literally thousands of years old. But I never, ever, ever heard the phrase mindfulness until like ten years ago.

Jackie: So because it didn’t have a name, it means it doesn’t exist and it’s not real?

Gabe: Yeah, I did. I hear the stupidity in that.

Jackie: It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, here’s what I think. Mindfulness is not one thing. It’s not a list of five steps. It’s not clearly defined. It’s a relatively abstract concept. And I think that a lot of people in the world have a hard time wrapping their brain around the idea of mindfulness could really be anything. It’s what works for you. And without clear guidelines and really stringent rules we’re all like, this is scary. I don’t really understand what this is and it must not work. It must be completely rooted in all of the wiggy and the weird hippy dippy shit because I don’t have a clear guide on how to make it work for me.

Gabe: I want people to know that I don’t like have a vendetta against mindfulness. Like I can kind of hear it in myself. Like dude, why do you care? And as I said at the top of the show, I’m not trying to get anybody to stop it. It’s just as a mental health advocate and somebody who lives with bipolar disorder, I face so much misinformation. Pill shamers, they tell me constantly, Gabe, you don’t need antidepressants. You need to go for a walk in the woods. And I’m like, no, stop it. And people tell me, oh, you have bipolar disorder? You can control depression and mania by running on a treadmill. And there’s always this little bit of science. Diet and exercise does help with bipolar disorder. Going for a walk in the woods sounds delightful. You know, on an overcast day when it’s about 70 degrees and not raining, but to cure bipolar disorder? That scares me. And people are looking for reasons to ignore the medical establishment. Have you seen the anti-vax movement? We now have measles for the first time in several generations. It just seems like mindfulness is just the latest new age cure to get us away from doing the hard work that it takes to be well when you’re managing a major mental health issue or living with mental illness. So, Jackie, I’m going to throw the ball back to you and say, do you think that mindfulness is a replacement for therapy? Because I know you’re pro therapy.

Jackie: No, it’s not. I don’t think mindfulness will cure anything. It’s not going to cure bipolar. I don’t think mindfulness is the only treatment option. I don’t think that mindfulness should replace anything else you’re doing. I think it’s an additional tool to use in conjunction with what you’re already doing. Like you can’t tell me that something that lowers stress, increases appreciation in relationships, and helps with your attention skills, or decision making is something that’s not going to help you in your life or handle living with bipolar or handle living with depression. All of those things are just going to make your tool kit bigger.

Gabe: I can get behind the idea that this is a tool in your tool kit. You have a fully functional tool kit and somebody says, dude, you need a mallet. But I have a hammer. And they’re like, no, no. A mallet. I know you’re thinking it’s the same thing, but a mallet is good. So I take the mallet and I put it in with all of my other tools. I can get behind that. You read the same Internet that I read, Jackie. You know that there are people who believe that mindfulness is a cure. You know that there are people that have just elevated mindfulness so far up that they’re like, dude, get rid of your toolbox, you are mallet man now. Now, what do you say to those people and why do they believe it?

Jackie: I don’t agree with that. I can’t say, yeah, that is gonna be the solution. I believe in science. I also believe in modern medicine. I think that science, modern medicine and a little bit of like the wiggy can all live together. That’s why we have holistic health centers and things now. Because there is value in a lot of these things. Can they treat modern disease? I personally don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a replacement for medication or modern medicine. I don’t. But I think that if you are somebody who doesn’t trust medicine, who has issues with medication for whatever reason you do, or somebody who just wants to believe in a holistic approach, you could put all your eggs in the mindfulness basket and be like, this is the thing. I don’t think it is the thing. I think it’s something that not only helps with anxiety, depression and a lot of other just feelings-based things. I will say like when I feel sad or feel really anxious, I think that mindfulness helps me ground myself. Mindfulness is very similar to meditation in that way. We have all kinds of studies on meditation. You’re not telling me meditation is bullshit. Meditation works. We’re teaching it in schools now. It’s all kinds of shit. But mindfulness, because it’s a new term, to you and to a lot of society right now, doesn’t mean it’s a new concept.

Gabe: I feel the desperate need to say that even Berkeley says that mindfulness is not going to fix or cure anything by itself. It’s always an add on tool. Every study is like, yeah, that this helps in a lot of different areas. But yeah, don’t give up your medicine, fire your therapist, fire your psychiatrist. It’s not gonna cure bipolar disorder, however, to your point. While it doesn’t cure anxiety. It’s really been shown to be very effective at lowering anxiety and stress. That did impress me because I am science driven. And maybe that’s the problem that I have with it. Maybe people just took a good thing too far. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom got me a bike. Right? The bike got me to and from school faster. That was fantastic. And then me and my dumb ass friends built ramps, and then some of us broke our legs.

Jackie: But how can too much mindfulness be a bad thing?

Gabe: I mean, if you break your legs. 

Jackie: How can too much calming being the moment reconnect with yourself, with your relationships, you know, helping increase the density of gray matter? Actually, one study says that it might be just as effective as antidepressants. How can you say too much of that is a bad thing?

Gabe: There’s a million esoteric ways that I could go. Like, for example, people always make the comment, how can too much money be a bad thing? Well, did we all see Scrooge? That was bad for him. He was going to have to carry a chain and rot in hell forever. But let’s take it another step. If you are a miser that holds on to all of your money and you value your money over your relationships, then too much money becomes a bad thing. Let’s apply it here. If you have decided to ignore your psychiatrist, ignore your psychologist, ignore your general practitioner, stop taking your medication because you read on a website that all you need to do is stare at a flower for a half an hour a day. That’s a bad thing. I think maybe what you mean to say is that if it works for you and there are no ill effects, then it’s a good thing. But what I’m finding is the people that I talk to that say, oh, I’m only using this. There are no ill effects. I’m like, well, did you do it in conjunction with your doctor? I don’t need to. Why are you afraid to have your doctor look at what you’re doing? Are you afraid that they’ll find a flaw in your methodology? Are you afraid that something might happen that they’ll point out? It does seem like sometimes people gravitate to things like mindfulness and they just ignore all of the outside data so that they can say that, listen, mindfulness is working. But in the meantime, in order to actually do mindfulness 24/7, you’re probably unemployed. And that in and of itself is bad.

Jackie: Well, first of all, nobody can do mindfulness 24/7. 

Gabe: Because of sleeping?

Jackie: No, because it’s basically impossible to stay hyper focused on one thing or your breathing or what the air feels like or the birds that are chirping. It is impossible unless you are a Buddhist monk in a mountain somewhere. You cannot do this 24/7. And it sounds like everybody you’re talking to is only doing this. And that’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what this is saying. If somebody said to you, I’m only going to take medication, that’s it. You would say that’s a bad idea.

Gabe: Oh, yeah. I’d say it’s a horrible idea. It’s a terrible idea.

Jackie: One thing is your one and only your hard stop is always a bad idea. All of these things require a combination unique to you, probably very different from somebody else. Dosage, time you’re doing mindfulness, are you going to therapy? All of the things; it all works together. At no point do I think anywhere that’s credible would say only practice mindfulness and that will lead you to a path of no mental illness. One hundred percent no.

Gabe: We’re gonna step away and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Announcer: Interested in learning about psychology and mental health from experts in the field? Give a listen to the Psych Central Podcast, hosted by Gabe Howard. Visit PsychCentral.com/Show or subscribe to The Psych Central Podcast on your favorite podcast player.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Jackie: And we’re back, and I’m proving Gabe wrong about mindfulness.

Gabe: I’ve struggled with my weight for pretty much my entire life and I’ve been on a myriad of diets and eating plans and weight loss plans in the ones that work the best for me is the one that has no forbidden foods. It’s like, look. Eat what you like. And their sort of motto was all things in moderation. Understanding that, yeah, you can have cake on your birthday, but a sheet cake is too much. I know that I come out hard against mindfulness because when it first came out, it just had all of this. It just had all this flowery language and people were excited about it and they elevated it to a point where it didn’t belong to your point. A lot of that has a limited down, and there’s probably a bigger discussion to be why are so many people looking outside of what they currently have? Like, people have been struggling with mental illness and mental health issues for so long that when something new shows up, they’re desperate for it. Which really kind of shows you were not doing a good job with all of the stuff we have now. Because people who are healthy, people like me, you know, therapy is working for me. Medication is working for me. Family supports are working for me. So I sort of have the privilege to ignore this. I really do. Hey, this sounds dumb, I don’t want to do it. Well, that’s congratulations. You’re living well. You can. So it’s impacting a vulnerable group. I struggle with this a lot, Jackie. I really do, because the vulnerable group needs more. But the vulnerable group, they’re also easily taken advantage of. And I don’t know how to balance that.

Jackie: I agree with you that things positioned to a vulnerable group of people, if positioned incorrectly, can be harmful. Right? And I also would agree with you that when we’ll say mindfulness came on the scene, right, it started getting a lot of airtime. People were talking about it. You know, yogis everywhere were like, you must do this. All of that shit. I agree that it got elevated to a level similar to, honestly, you know, the benefits of yoga. The benefits of meditation. All of these sort of holistic things that naysayers and skeptics go like this is all bullshit. We’re not doing this. And as somebody who is rooted in science, loves modern medicine, you know, I am the skeptic. I am this. But there is a tiny part of me that believes in the power of the wiggy, as I call it. And the reason is because I’ve seen its benefits, right? When I am heavily worked up, and I take a minute, literally a minute to meditate, I feel better afterwards. I know that it works. Scientific research will back up why it works. The problem with things that fall under the category of the wiggy, or the hippy dippy, whatever you want to call it is that there is some buy-in required to see the benefit.

Jackie: You have to go into it going, this is going to work. Or even this could work. But if you’re trying to be mindful, you’re focusing on smelling the roses for a minute and the whole time you’re like, this is fucking stupid. Why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this. It’s not gonna work. You’re not going to get the benefits of it. The whole point is to clear your mind. If your mind is perpetually telling you this is really stupid, you’re not going to see the benefit of it. So there are always going to be people who are not going to be able to just clear all their preconceived notions and just see it for what it is. I was one of them for a very, very long time. You have to at least allow yourself to fathom the idea that it could be a useful thing for you.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like the explanation, especially backed by the Berkeley study, that mindfulness is a tool and we don’t all use the same tools. Not everybody needs a mallet, but everybody needs a toolbox. And what you put in that toolbox is different. It really reminds me of my friend Dreama. My friend Dreama is an interior decorator and I thought interior decorators were like rich people bullshit. Maybe it’s because I was raised blue collar. Maybe it’s because I’m poor. I don’t know. But she was like, no, interior design is is beautiful and decoration is beautiful. And it it helps you dream and it opens up pathways. And, you know, being in a beautiful environment will make you happy. And every time she spoke, I was like, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Then one day I get divorced. Here I am. I’m divorced. I’m moving into a six hundred square foot apartment, which I was moving out of a house into a 600 square foot apartment. I had almost no money. I had all kinds of junk shit and Dreama to the rescue. She’s like, listen, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to design your apartment for free. I’m going to decorate it all. I’m going to lay it out largely with all the stuff that you already own. And I’m like, whatever, crazy lady. I don’t even care. I am too depressed to stop you.

Gabe: I. I call this place my pod. It’s probably one of the nicest places I’ve ever lived in my entire life. It was just so organized and beautiful and perfect. And I just couldn’t see what she was saying. And what she was essentially saying is that pretty organized spaces that speak to you make you feel better. I think that’s where we are with mindfulness. I don’t know that it helps me, but as you’ve pointed out, counting to 10, stopping to smell the roses are mindfulness acts. But there’s really no reason to be against it as long as you’re using it for the right thing. Obviously, if I quit my job to stay in my beautifully decorated home, that would be too far. If I paid my friend Dreama one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to design my 600 square foot apartment. Yeah. Maybe I’m abusing interior design. None of that happened. I used it correctly and she proved me wrong. And you have maybe proved me wrong too.

Jackie: Well. 

Gabe: But whatever.

Jackie: So can I get Dreama’s number? Because I could really use some help in that design department.

Gabe: Your house is pretty.

Jackie: This is what I really think about mindfulness. OK. I think it is a really helpful tool. If you believe it can be a helpful tool. The other thing is it’s hard. It actually takes work. If you are somebody who is kind of skeptic on the fence and you sit down and you try to smell the roses, as we have said, and the whole time you find yourself your mind wandering, doing other stuff and you’re like, this is stupid. I can’t do it. You have to stick with it. It is very similar to meditation. You have to retrain your brain to refocus back on what you’re doing. And the best way to do it is to start like really, really small. One of the best suggestions I ever heard for mindfulness was while you’re in the shower. Maybe you’re in the shower five minutes a day. I don’t know how long you take your showers, but while you’re in there, only think about the water hitting your skin, which is kind of easy to do because it is perpetually hitting your skin over and over and over again. But when you start to think about what you have to do that day, go back to thinking about the water. Mindfulness is something that takes work. You have to work at it, which means it’s not a simple fix to everything else in your life, much like all other treatment plans. It’s not an easy thing. It won’t fix it immediately. You have to work for it. And a lot of people who are skeptical aren’t willing to work for it so they won’t see the benefits of it.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like your tip about trying mindfulness in the shower. Especially the part where you can recall it throughout the day. But you’re like a mindfulness like master. You know you’re a master mindfulness-er. So what is your favorite mindfulness activity?

Jackie: That’s really hard to say because honestly, it changes with the seasons because I like to be outside in the summer. And one of the simplest mindfulness things you can do is sit outside and let the sun hit you and just focus on what it feels like when the sun hits you. Like where’s it warming on your body? How does it make you feel? Literally just feeling it. And that’s one of those things when you’re like, don’t we all just count to 10? Don’t we all do whatever? No, we don’t. We don’t make the time to focus on the thing, whatever the thing is. Another thing to do, that was a great suggestion from my therapist, who I love, was to sit in the grass one day and just feel the grass. Feel the wind. Listen to the sounds. Like, just only do that. Most the time we’re sitting in the grass and I’m making a to do list or I’m thinking about how there’s probably a bug crawling on me or if there’s a car driving by, like, what if somebody is walking up behind me right now? You know, you’re not focusing on the thing. The thing is to focus on what you feel, what it sounds like, the senses. The mindfulness is focusing on the senses. And most of us are really, really bad at doing that. So, Gabe, after all of that, after breaking down how small it can be or how it’s not going to change your life immediately, it’s not going be your only treatment option. Would you consider a mindfulness practice?

Gabe: In the interest of honesty, no, I’m not considering it at all. That said, I’m not in a bad way right now. Right? I’m not currently experiencing depression or high anxiety. I gotta tell you, though, I am willing to put the mallet in my toolbox. I just don’t have a need for a mallet right now. And I think that’s maybe what a lot of people should be willing to do with the things that just don’t sound like they are for them. Maybe they should just be willing to put it in their back pocket and consider it maybe for later. And at the beginning of the show, at the beginning of the research for the show, I was positive that we’re going to end in a very different place. So it was really, really mean to go get science and Berkeley involved. Like that. 

Jackie: I’m such a dick.

Gabe: That was my Achilles heel. Jackie, it is always fun hanging out with you. Thanks for being my co-host.

Jackie: I love proving you wrong. It’s great to be your co-host.

Gabe: She wins one argument, ladies and gentlemen. Listen up, listeners, here’s what we need all of you to do. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe. Please rate us. Please use your words and review us and tell people what you like about the show. If there’s something that you don’t like about the show, hey, we completely understand. We’re human. Email us at show@PsychCentral.com and tell us about it. Remember after the credits, there’s always outtakes because hey, nobody’s perfect. Including Gabe and Jackie. And we will see you next week.

Jackie: And as always, thank you for listening.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Not Crazy from Psych Central. For free mental health resources and online support groups, visit PsychCentral.com. Not Crazy’s official website is PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. To work with Gabe, go to gabehoward.com. To work with Jackie, go to JackieZimmerman.co. Not Crazy travels well. Have Gabe and Jackie record an episode live at your next event. E-mail show@psychcentral.com for details. 

  Podcast: What is Mindfulness? syndicated from

[positivepsychologyinterventions]

Podcast: What is Mindfulness?

  Is your mind constantly preoccupied with the past or the future? What if you could train your brain to just BE in the present moment? This is the essence of mindfulness — simply being in the here-and-now (not worrying about that stupid thing you said last week), and gently noticing your surroundings and thoughts without judgment. In today’s podcast, Jackie enlightens a skeptical Gabe of the value of practicing mindfulness and how it can be a very useful tool in his mental health tool box. And she’s armed with scientific facts to break him down.

When was the last time you truly listened to the rain, enjoyed a cup of coffee… or stopped to smell the roses? Tune in to hear how mindfulness can help you get rid of the mental static that causes so much anxiety.

(Transcript Available Below)

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

About The Not Crazy Podcast Hosts

Gabe Howard is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations, available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from Gabe Howard. To learn more, please visit his website, gabehoward.com.

        Jackie Zimmerman has been in the patient advocacy game for over a decade and has established herself as an authority on chronic illness, patient-centric healthcare, and patient community building. She lives with multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, and depression.

You can find her online at JackieZimmerman.co, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

    Computer Generated Transcript for “Mindfulness” Episode

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript has been computer generated and therefore may contain inaccuracies and grammar errors. Thank you.

Announcer: You’re listening to Not Crazy, a Psych Central podcast. And here are your hosts, Jackie Zimmerman and Gabe Howard.

Gabe: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Not Crazy Podcast. I’d like to introduce my co-host, Jackie.

Jackie: And that was my co-host, Gabe.

Gabe: Jackie, we are going to discuss mindfulness. And not surprisingly, I am not a big fan of mindfulness, probably because I’m a Gen Xer and have common sense.

Jackie: Oh. Oh. Shots fired. OK. Well, I guess that’s why this is a good topic, is because we don’t agree probably at all. I think mindfulness is an amazing tool. It’s wonderful. And everybody should be using it, just like therapy.

Gabe: It’s important to point out that just because Gabe Howard doesn’t like mindfulness doesn’t mean that Gabe Howard thinks that mindfulness is bad, should go away, or that people shouldn’t use it. I also don’t understand yoga. I will never do yoga. It’s scary to me. I would get wrapped up like a pretzel. But I’m not on a campaign to eliminate yoga. I’m not on a campaign to end mindfulness. It’s just everywhere. And it seems to be offered up as the solution to every problem until CBD oil came out. And then we sort of forgot about mindfulness for a little bit. But sincerely, it is everywhere.

Jackie: It is everywhere. And it’s not the solution to everything, but it is a solution to a lot of things. Not solution, it will aid a lot of things. Let’s be clear, it’s not going to solve world hunger, but it can make things better. Right? It’s helpful. It’s helpful. And it can. 

Gabe: It’s like taking a hot shower when you’re sick.

Jackie: It can get you to where you want to be, maybe a little bit faster. And let’s rewind for a minute, Gabe. Actually, before we jump into that, let’s talk about what is mindfulness. 

Gabe: Like from a technical definition?

Jackie: Yes.

Gabe: Not its new age bunk that is pointless.

Jackie: No. This is from Berkeley.edu. So.

Gabe: All right. I trust Berkeley.

Jackie: Berkeley. This is a really long definition. I’m just going to read a part of it, which says mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment through a gentle nurturing lens. I know you’re gonna say that’s bullshit.

Gabe: But I do struggle with this because it’s not. Who shouldn’t be aware of their body, right? I don’t think it’s bullshit to be aware of your body. I don’t think it’s bullshit to stop and smell the roses. I don’t think it’s bullshit to count to 10. I just think that all of this stuff existed and that people have been doing it for years and we didn’t put a name on it and give it like a culture surrounding it. I think maybe that’s what I have the problem with. Mindfulness used to be called stop and smell the roses. Mindfulness used to be called slow-down. Now all the sudden it’s like a new fangled thing that people think they just discovered. 

Jackie: Wrong. First of all, mindfulness is actually rooted in like Buddhist meditation, right? So it’s not a new fangled thing. It’s a thing that specifically in America we suck at. So yeah. Stop and smell the roses is the same thing. Take a moment. Pause is the same thing. But we didn’t do it. Nobody did it. And they definitely didn’t do it in a way that was long and meaningful. Yes. If you stop literally for a moment and smell the roses. Technically, that’s mindfulness. But do you get any of the benefits from a 0.5 second roses smell? No, you don’t.

Gabe: But don’t you? Now I’m going to defend mindfulness because I kind of disagree. Like when you said, do you get any benefit from a 0.5 second rose smell? Are you kidding? We never stop. First off, we don’t do things one at a time now. We invented multi-tasking, and that’s my generation. You know how I was making fun of your generation? Gen Xers invented, one thing at a time? No, multi-tasking is where it’s at. So we don’t stop and do anything for .05 seconds. So are you kidding? Like 0.5? That’s an improvement. So yeah, in that way, I agree with you. I just don’t think it’s mindfulness. I think it’s stopping to smell the fucking roses. 

Jackie: But it is mindfulness. It doesn’t hurt to put a title on it. Right. OK. Prime example. Have you ever gone to a friend and talked about a problem, Gabe?

Gabe: Yes.

Jackie: And isn’t that similar to what you do in therapy?

Gabe: I mean, except that therapy works on a scientific basis.

Jackie: So does mindfulness.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does.

Gabe: Does it?

Jackie: It does. Would you like some facts?

Gabe: I would love some facts. The way that it is described, and I know that I’m old and I know that I’m crotchety. I know that I’m set in my ways. But I would love to read any article about mindfulness that doesn’t make it sound like bunk. I am open to the idea, Jackie, that it’s not, but it’s always so hippy dippy and flowery and it doesn’t seem to be based on anything. And I would like to point out that talking to your friends and therapy, while maybe on the same spectrum, are a world of difference. I don’t want everybody to avoid therapy because of, you know, Bob at the bar.

Jackie: No, but you can fit. Talking things out is helpful.

Gabe: Right.

Jackie: It has a name. It’s called therapy. When you’re doing with your friend, it’s not therapy, but like it fits under the idea of talking out your problems.

Gabe: Very true.

Jackie: Similarly in this situation. But here’s a fact. Ready to have your mind blown? Mindfulness changes our brains. This is still from Berkeley. Researchers found that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning memory, emotion, regulation and empathy.

Gabe: Give me an example of practicing mindfulness. What are we dealing with? You know, we use the example of stopping to smell the roses. And I know that that that is a mindfulness basis. But I can’t believe that stopping to smell the roses for 0.5 seconds or even five minutes a day, I can’t believe that that is changing gray matter in humans. It doesn’t sound reasonable to me.

Jackie: Well, as you might suspect, I strongly disagree with you again on this. Because you can’t tell me that over time, stopping to relax your brain, release stress, all the positive things that come out of something like mindfulness can’t change the chemistry in your brain. You’re telling me that if you’re on level 10 stress forever that your brain chemistry doesn’t change?

Gabe: I will cave immediately on that one. Because obviously when when I was in a state of perpetual depression, for example, that changed my brain. When I was in a state of perpetual mania, that changed my brain. So sometimes I do feel like I’m stuck in a semantics argument. Like I feel like I’m saying, hey, look, we need to be aware of our surroundings. We need to not live in this stress. We need to understand our limitations and we need to count to ten. We need to focus on our breathing. And I think that’s a good idea. People have heard me say this. And then your side fires back. Well, that’s mindfulness. And I immediately say no. How did we get here? Because one of the things that you said is that mindfulness came from Buddhism, which is which is literally thousands of years old. But I never, ever, ever heard the phrase mindfulness until like ten years ago.

Jackie: So because it didn’t have a name, it means it doesn’t exist and it’s not real?

Gabe: Yeah, I did. I hear the stupidity in that.

Jackie: It doesn’t make any sense. I mean, here’s what I think. Mindfulness is not one thing. It’s not a list of five steps. It’s not clearly defined. It’s a relatively abstract concept. And I think that a lot of people in the world have a hard time wrapping their brain around the idea of mindfulness could really be anything. It’s what works for you. And without clear guidelines and really stringent rules we’re all like, this is scary. I don’t really understand what this is and it must not work. It must be completely rooted in all of the wiggy and the weird hippy dippy shit because I don’t have a clear guide on how to make it work for me.

Gabe: I want people to know that I don’t like have a vendetta against mindfulness. Like I can kind of hear it in myself. Like dude, why do you care? And as I said at the top of the show, I’m not trying to get anybody to stop it. It’s just as a mental health advocate and somebody who lives with bipolar disorder, I face so much misinformation. Pill shamers, they tell me constantly, Gabe, you don’t need antidepressants. You need to go for a walk in the woods. And I’m like, no, stop it. And people tell me, oh, you have bipolar disorder? You can control depression and mania by running on a treadmill. And there’s always this little bit of science. Diet and exercise does help with bipolar disorder. Going for a walk in the woods sounds delightful. You know, on an overcast day when it’s about 70 degrees and not raining, but to cure bipolar disorder? That scares me. And people are looking for reasons to ignore the medical establishment. Have you seen the anti-vax movement? We now have measles for the first time in several generations. It just seems like mindfulness is just the latest new age cure to get us away from doing the hard work that it takes to be well when you’re managing a major mental health issue or living with mental illness. So, Jackie, I’m going to throw the ball back to you and say, do you think that mindfulness is a replacement for therapy? Because I know you’re pro therapy.

Jackie: No, it’s not. I don’t think mindfulness will cure anything. It’s not going to cure bipolar. I don’t think mindfulness is the only treatment option. I don’t think that mindfulness should replace anything else you’re doing. I think it’s an additional tool to use in conjunction with what you’re already doing. Like you can’t tell me that something that lowers stress, increases appreciation in relationships, and helps with your attention skills, or decision making is something that’s not going to help you in your life or handle living with bipolar or handle living with depression. All of those things are just going to make your tool kit bigger.

Gabe: I can get behind the idea that this is a tool in your tool kit. You have a fully functional tool kit and somebody says, dude, you need a mallet. But I have a hammer. And they’re like, no, no. A mallet. I know you’re thinking it’s the same thing, but a mallet is good. So I take the mallet and I put it in with all of my other tools. I can get behind that. You read the same Internet that I read, Jackie. You know that there are people who believe that mindfulness is a cure. You know that there are people that have just elevated mindfulness so far up that they’re like, dude, get rid of your toolbox, you are mallet man now. Now, what do you say to those people and why do they believe it?

Jackie: I don’t agree with that. I can’t say, yeah, that is gonna be the solution. I believe in science. I also believe in modern medicine. I think that science, modern medicine and a little bit of like the wiggy can all live together. That’s why we have holistic health centers and things now. Because there is value in a lot of these things. Can they treat modern disease? I personally don’t think so. I don’t think it’s a replacement for medication or modern medicine. I don’t. But I think that if you are somebody who doesn’t trust medicine, who has issues with medication for whatever reason you do, or somebody who just wants to believe in a holistic approach, you could put all your eggs in the mindfulness basket and be like, this is the thing. I don’t think it is the thing. I think it’s something that not only helps with anxiety, depression and a lot of other just feelings-based things. I will say like when I feel sad or feel really anxious, I think that mindfulness helps me ground myself. Mindfulness is very similar to meditation in that way. We have all kinds of studies on meditation. You’re not telling me meditation is bullshit. Meditation works. We’re teaching it in schools now. It’s all kinds of shit. But mindfulness, because it’s a new term, to you and to a lot of society right now, doesn’t mean it’s a new concept.

Gabe: I feel the desperate need to say that even Berkeley says that mindfulness is not going to fix or cure anything by itself. It’s always an add on tool. Every study is like, yeah, that this helps in a lot of different areas. But yeah, don’t give up your medicine, fire your therapist, fire your psychiatrist. It’s not gonna cure bipolar disorder, however, to your point. While it doesn’t cure anxiety. It’s really been shown to be very effective at lowering anxiety and stress. That did impress me because I am science driven. And maybe that’s the problem that I have with it. Maybe people just took a good thing too far. It reminds me of when I was a kid and my mom got me a bike. Right? The bike got me to and from school faster. That was fantastic. And then me and my dumb ass friends built ramps, and then some of us broke our legs.

Jackie: But how can too much mindfulness be a bad thing?

Gabe: I mean, if you break your legs. 

Jackie: How can too much calming being the moment reconnect with yourself, with your relationships, you know, helping increase the density of gray matter? Actually, one study says that it might be just as effective as antidepressants. How can you say too much of that is a bad thing?

Gabe: There’s a million esoteric ways that I could go. Like, for example, people always make the comment, how can too much money be a bad thing? Well, did we all see Scrooge? That was bad for him. He was going to have to carry a chain and rot in hell forever. But let’s take it another step. If you are a miser that holds on to all of your money and you value your money over your relationships, then too much money becomes a bad thing. Let’s apply it here. If you have decided to ignore your psychiatrist, ignore your psychologist, ignore your general practitioner, stop taking your medication because you read on a website that all you need to do is stare at a flower for a half an hour a day. That’s a bad thing. I think maybe what you mean to say is that if it works for you and there are no ill effects, then it’s a good thing. But what I’m finding is the people that I talk to that say, oh, I’m only using this. There are no ill effects. I’m like, well, did you do it in conjunction with your doctor? I don’t need to. Why are you afraid to have your doctor look at what you’re doing? Are you afraid that they’ll find a flaw in your methodology? Are you afraid that something might happen that they’ll point out? It does seem like sometimes people gravitate to things like mindfulness and they just ignore all of the outside data so that they can say that, listen, mindfulness is working. But in the meantime, in order to actually do mindfulness 24/7, you’re probably unemployed. And that in and of itself is bad.

Jackie: Well, first of all, nobody can do mindfulness 24/7. 

Gabe: Because of sleeping?

Jackie: No, because it’s basically impossible to stay hyper focused on one thing or your breathing or what the air feels like or the birds that are chirping. It is impossible unless you are a Buddhist monk in a mountain somewhere. You cannot do this 24/7. And it sounds like everybody you’re talking to is only doing this. And that’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what this is saying. If somebody said to you, I’m only going to take medication, that’s it. You would say that’s a bad idea.

Gabe: Oh, yeah. I’d say it’s a horrible idea. It’s a terrible idea.

Jackie: One thing is your one and only your hard stop is always a bad idea. All of these things require a combination unique to you, probably very different from somebody else. Dosage, time you’re doing mindfulness, are you going to therapy? All of the things; it all works together. At no point do I think anywhere that’s credible would say only practice mindfulness and that will lead you to a path of no mental illness. One hundred percent no.

Gabe: We’re gonna step away and we’ll be right back after these messages.

Announcer: Interested in learning about psychology and mental health from experts in the field? Give a listen to the Psych Central Podcast, hosted by Gabe Howard. Visit PsychCentral.com/Show or subscribe to The Psych Central Podcast on your favorite podcast player.

Announcer: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.com. Secure, convenient, and affordable online counseling. Our counselors are licensed, accredited professionals. Anything you share is confidential. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist whenever you feel it’s needed. A month of online therapy often costs less than a single traditional face to face session. Go to BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral and experience seven days of free therapy to see if online counseling is right for you. BetterHelp.com/PsychCentral.

Jackie: And we’re back, and I’m proving Gabe wrong about mindfulness.

Gabe: I’ve struggled with my weight for pretty much my entire life and I’ve been on a myriad of diets and eating plans and weight loss plans in the ones that work the best for me is the one that has no forbidden foods. It’s like, look. Eat what you like. And their sort of motto was all things in moderation. Understanding that, yeah, you can have cake on your birthday, but a sheet cake is too much. I know that I come out hard against mindfulness because when it first came out, it just had all of this. It just had all this flowery language and people were excited about it and they elevated it to a point where it didn’t belong to your point. A lot of that has a limited down, and there’s probably a bigger discussion to be why are so many people looking outside of what they currently have? Like, people have been struggling with mental illness and mental health issues for so long that when something new shows up, they’re desperate for it. Which really kind of shows you were not doing a good job with all of the stuff we have now. Because people who are healthy, people like me, you know, therapy is working for me. Medication is working for me. Family supports are working for me. So I sort of have the privilege to ignore this. I really do. Hey, this sounds dumb, I don’t want to do it. Well, that’s congratulations. You’re living well. You can. So it’s impacting a vulnerable group. I struggle with this a lot, Jackie. I really do, because the vulnerable group needs more. But the vulnerable group, they’re also easily taken advantage of. And I don’t know how to balance that.

Jackie: I agree with you that things positioned to a vulnerable group of people, if positioned incorrectly, can be harmful. Right? And I also would agree with you that when we’ll say mindfulness came on the scene, right, it started getting a lot of airtime. People were talking about it. You know, yogis everywhere were like, you must do this. All of that shit. I agree that it got elevated to a level similar to, honestly, you know, the benefits of yoga. The benefits of meditation. All of these sort of holistic things that naysayers and skeptics go like this is all bullshit. We’re not doing this. And as somebody who is rooted in science, loves modern medicine, you know, I am the skeptic. I am this. But there is a tiny part of me that believes in the power of the wiggy, as I call it. And the reason is because I’ve seen its benefits, right? When I am heavily worked up, and I take a minute, literally a minute to meditate, I feel better afterwards. I know that it works. Scientific research will back up why it works. The problem with things that fall under the category of the wiggy, or the hippy dippy, whatever you want to call it is that there is some buy-in required to see the benefit.

Jackie: You have to go into it going, this is going to work. Or even this could work. But if you’re trying to be mindful, you’re focusing on smelling the roses for a minute and the whole time you’re like, this is fucking stupid. Why am I doing this? I don’t want to do this. It’s not gonna work. You’re not going to get the benefits of it. The whole point is to clear your mind. If your mind is perpetually telling you this is really stupid, you’re not going to see the benefit of it. So there are always going to be people who are not going to be able to just clear all their preconceived notions and just see it for what it is. I was one of them for a very, very long time. You have to at least allow yourself to fathom the idea that it could be a useful thing for you.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like the explanation, especially backed by the Berkeley study, that mindfulness is a tool and we don’t all use the same tools. Not everybody needs a mallet, but everybody needs a toolbox. And what you put in that toolbox is different. It really reminds me of my friend Dreama. My friend Dreama is an interior decorator and I thought interior decorators were like rich people bullshit. Maybe it’s because I was raised blue collar. Maybe it’s because I’m poor. I don’t know. But she was like, no, interior design is is beautiful and decoration is beautiful. And it it helps you dream and it opens up pathways. And, you know, being in a beautiful environment will make you happy. And every time she spoke, I was like, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Then one day I get divorced. Here I am. I’m divorced. I’m moving into a six hundred square foot apartment, which I was moving out of a house into a 600 square foot apartment. I had almost no money. I had all kinds of junk shit and Dreama to the rescue. She’s like, listen, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to design your apartment for free. I’m going to decorate it all. I’m going to lay it out largely with all the stuff that you already own. And I’m like, whatever, crazy lady. I don’t even care. I am too depressed to stop you.

Gabe: I. I call this place my pod. It’s probably one of the nicest places I’ve ever lived in my entire life. It was just so organized and beautiful and perfect. And I just couldn’t see what she was saying. And what she was essentially saying is that pretty organized spaces that speak to you make you feel better. I think that’s where we are with mindfulness. I don’t know that it helps me, but as you’ve pointed out, counting to 10, stopping to smell the roses are mindfulness acts. But there’s really no reason to be against it as long as you’re using it for the right thing. Obviously, if I quit my job to stay in my beautifully decorated home, that would be too far. If I paid my friend Dreama one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to design my 600 square foot apartment. Yeah. Maybe I’m abusing interior design. None of that happened. I used it correctly and she proved me wrong. And you have maybe proved me wrong too.

Jackie: Well. 

Gabe: But whatever.

Jackie: So can I get Dreama’s number? Because I could really use some help in that design department.

Gabe: Your house is pretty.

Jackie: This is what I really think about mindfulness. OK. I think it is a really helpful tool. If you believe it can be a helpful tool. The other thing is it’s hard. It actually takes work. If you are somebody who is kind of skeptic on the fence and you sit down and you try to smell the roses, as we have said, and the whole time you find yourself your mind wandering, doing other stuff and you’re like, this is stupid. I can’t do it. You have to stick with it. It is very similar to meditation. You have to retrain your brain to refocus back on what you’re doing. And the best way to do it is to start like really, really small. One of the best suggestions I ever heard for mindfulness was while you’re in the shower. Maybe you’re in the shower five minutes a day. I don’t know how long you take your showers, but while you’re in there, only think about the water hitting your skin, which is kind of easy to do because it is perpetually hitting your skin over and over and over again. But when you start to think about what you have to do that day, go back to thinking about the water. Mindfulness is something that takes work. You have to work at it, which means it’s not a simple fix to everything else in your life, much like all other treatment plans. It’s not an easy thing. It won’t fix it immediately. You have to work for it. And a lot of people who are skeptical aren’t willing to work for it so they won’t see the benefits of it.

Gabe: Jackie, I really like your tip about trying mindfulness in the shower. Especially the part where you can recall it throughout the day. But you’re like a mindfulness like master. You know you’re a master mindfulness-er. So what is your favorite mindfulness activity?

Jackie: That’s really hard to say because honestly, it changes with the seasons because I like to be outside in the summer. And one of the simplest mindfulness things you can do is sit outside and let the sun hit you and just focus on what it feels like when the sun hits you. Like where’s it warming on your body? How does it make you feel? Literally just feeling it. And that’s one of those things when you’re like, don’t we all just count to 10? Don’t we all do whatever? No, we don’t. We don’t make the time to focus on the thing, whatever the thing is. Another thing to do, that was a great suggestion from my therapist, who I love, was to sit in the grass one day and just feel the grass. Feel the wind. Listen to the sounds. Like, just only do that. Most the time we’re sitting in the grass and I’m making a to do list or I’m thinking about how there’s probably a bug crawling on me or if there’s a car driving by, like, what if somebody is walking up behind me right now? You know, you’re not focusing on the thing. The thing is to focus on what you feel, what it sounds like, the senses. The mindfulness is focusing on the senses. And most of us are really, really bad at doing that. So, Gabe, after all of that, after breaking down how small it can be or how it’s not going to change your life immediately, it’s not going be your only treatment option. Would you consider a mindfulness practice?

Gabe: In the interest of honesty, no, I’m not considering it at all. That said, I’m not in a bad way right now. Right? I’m not currently experiencing depression or high anxiety. I gotta tell you, though, I am willing to put the mallet in my toolbox. I just don’t have a need for a mallet right now. And I think that’s maybe what a lot of people should be willing to do with the things that just don’t sound like they are for them. Maybe they should just be willing to put it in their back pocket and consider it maybe for later. And at the beginning of the show, at the beginning of the research for the show, I was positive that we’re going to end in a very different place. So it was really, really mean to go get science and Berkeley involved. Like that. 

Jackie: I’m such a dick.

Gabe: That was my Achilles heel. Jackie, it is always fun hanging out with you. Thanks for being my co-host.

Jackie: I love proving you wrong. It’s great to be your co-host.

Gabe: She wins one argument, ladies and gentlemen. Listen up, listeners, here’s what we need all of you to do. Wherever you downloaded this podcast, please subscribe. Please rate us. Please use your words and review us and tell people what you like about the show. If there’s something that you don’t like about the show, hey, we completely understand. We’re human. Email us at show@PsychCentral.com and tell us about it. Remember after the credits, there’s always outtakes because hey, nobody’s perfect. Including Gabe and Jackie. And we will see you next week.

Jackie: And as always, thank you for listening.

Announcer: You’ve been listening to Not Crazy from Psych Central. For free mental health resources and online support groups, visit PsychCentral.com. Not Crazy’s official website is PsychCentral.com/NotCrazy. To work with Gabe, go to gabehoward.com. To work with Jackie, go to JackieZimmerman.co. Not Crazy travels well. Have Gabe and Jackie record an episode live at your next event. E-mail show@psychcentral.com for details. 

  from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/3eNXZm6 via IFTTT