Competitive yoga: who you calling "moron"?

We're pretty competitive in my family.  Actually, I don't know about my parents -- I just know that my sisters and I are fiercely competitive when it comes to games, and now that I think about it, I don't really know where that comes from at all since I don't remember a childhood full of board games.  In fact, I remember only playing board games (except Monopoly, yawn) at other people's houses which always seemed to be stocked with items we didn't/couldn't have, like Chutes and Ladders, which may be, I suppose, a common grass-is-greener memory that everybody has.  [Note: we did have sugar cereal and pudding cups. I am not claiming ever that my childhood was deprived.]  My point being only that I don't think our uber-competitiveness came to us from our parents or immediate childhood environment, unless it was the constant punning and riddling at the dinner table.  That is, when we were allowed to speak, during the commercial breaks so as not to interfere with dine-time watching of Gunsmoke or Hogan's Heroes on the tiny black & white tv at the end of the table.

We were raised very much in the school of Children Should Be Seen Not Heard, unless, of course, we had something particularly intelligent to say. Oh: there it is.

Looking back I think the three of us were always competing with each other in some way, in the way that siblings are in constant competition, for attention, for supremacy in something.  Early on, I was aware of the way we were labeled, each one of us representing for something.  In the most basic way, as the oldest child I was the first, Martine was the middle and Carla was the baby, but there was always more.  I was Running, Martine was Ballet, Carla was Gymnastics.   I was the sporty one, Martine was the tiny one, Carla was the chubby one.  I was the blonde one, Martine was the dark hair, Carla chestnut.  It's probably super common in families with multiple kids to do this kind of weird shorthand, to carve out territory in order to carve out identity, individuality.  But this categorization also led to perhaps unexpected ends -- in our case to this fierce I'll-either-trounce-you-at-Boggle-or-kill-you thing. 

Without intending ill, I'm sure my parents fomented it.  

French school also helped with this.  I was always aware of exactly where I stood on a particular assignment or quiz relative to the other students, the papers handed back in descending order of how many points on a total of 20 you had received.  I always knew, for example, that Susan was first in the class, Michael second, etc., on down to me wherever I was, closer to the bottom of the heap.  I went through the first many years of my life -- until Everett Junior High -- keenly aware of the vast extent of my own stupidity, as expressed through my apparent inability to master verb tenses in the third grade.

At a certain point, there are activities I just let go of, particularly when it seemed that Carla needed it the most.  She needed to always win at Scrabble, for example, when we were older.  She so enjoyed winning that game, puffed up with happiness at beating our asses resoundingly.  I am not saying we let her win -- she definitely is the Best at that game and beats me because she's better than me at it.  But the particular way she relished the triumph always got on my nerves a bit. At a certain point, please put the trumpet down. 

When Martine was in town a few years ago, staying at my parents, she and I met up at Yoga Tree on Hayes Street for a class. This was the first and only class we ever went to together because we live on opposite coasts.  She has practiced yoga longer than me, and somehow we both found and fell in love with the same style (Anusara) and have both benefited from the practice in enormous ways, both write about it, share friends through it.  It's been a joy to share this language with each other.  I loved being in class together that one time, spotting my tiny sister on the mat when it was time to do partner-stuff.  She's so graceful and beautiful, my sister.

The conversation, after my sister got back to my parents, went a little like this.  Martine, add a comment if I've left anything out.

Sari: "How was class?"

Martine: "It was great."

Sari: "So who's better at it?

Martine: "What do you mean?"

Sari: "I mean, who's better at yoga - you or Ariane?"

Martine: "Sari, yoga's not competitive."

Sari: "Yes, I know.  So who's better at it?"

At which Martine probably laughed and didn't say what everybody knows: that she is.

I can't help it -- I do bring my competitiveness to yoga.  When there's someone new in class, I'm always peeking to see what they're capable of, what they can do that I can't, what I can do that they can't.  It's not a ranking, as much as a yardstick: in the overall pattern of the class, where do they fit? Where do I?  With Martine, I know she's better at it than I am.  After all, she was amazing at ballet, so surely there's all that muscle-memory and flexibility she brings to it.  And everything she does, anyway, she does beautifully.  So I don't even have to see her poses to know she rocks it.

This is where my mind went this morning after reading an article in yesterday's New York Times about an asana competition.  How silly, I thought, to have to stand in front of judges and perform, in three minutes, five required postures + two of your choice.  Then the next thought, immediately following: Martine would totally win that over me.  I wouldn't end up crying in a broom closet like last year's winner, but that would be the outcome, one I would accept with the grace earned of a lifetime of living inside this loop.  

I do think "competitive yoga" is an oxymoron of the highest order.  It really isn't supposed to be a competition, although I think I know through personal experience, that everything, literally everything, can be made into a competition of one kind or another.  I don't think there's anything wrong with competitive yoga, since clearly I participate in that in my head.  I think I just prefer to do mine more quietly, no panel, just the judge inside my own head, whispering, "Your sister will always be better than you at this, but keep doing it anyway."