Big Girls Won't Cry

I was so glad to see an article about yoga for the larger practitioner in the NYTimes, which mentions classes just for the heavyset crowd (so no shame in front of the lithe and fit) and modifications for body weight.  Kelly McGonigal, of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, is quoted in the article and seemed surprised that such classes were necessary.  The most humiliating episode of my life came in a yoga class--and one purportedly for all sizes and levels, geared specifically for and supportive of women (often post-partum at that)--when the instructor repeatedly called out across the room asking why I couldn't do poses, what was keeping me from being like the other students, and then loudly said they had to change the practice because I couldn't keep up.  I eventually left the room--filled with friends, not even strangers, as this was a private group--in tears, unable to return.  I had been so excited, so hopeful about the class, having relied on yoga to help me through pregnancy, doing the breathing when I could no longer do the poses; it was such a disappointment to feel rejected.  I didn't know then, but know now, why I couldn't do those poses.  And it wasn't body fat.  It was a diastasis recti, slight scoliosis, leg-length differential, and symphysis separation wreaking all sorts of havoc on my musco-skeletal system.  It will be a long time before I do yoga again, and not for those reasons, but the pain of being the fat person in what is clearly a practice, as it has developed in this country, only for the skinny.  Unless of course, one of these big yoga classes migrates from NYC to CT.