Feedback from a new WW Fan in the UK

this was forwarded by one of our customers in the UK from a friend she referred to WW. enjoy...lanny
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My experience is minor compared to that of many women in the Whole Woman community. I am in my twenties, and have the privilege of good health. I have never even experienced a period in hospital beyond being born, and I can only say that I feel the deepest compassion for those of you who have undergone the traumatic events that are shared on the website. Although my story is much simpler, I want to emphasise how thankful I am that my friend Linda introduced me to the Whole Woman posture when she did, because prevention is certainly better than hip replacement surgery.

During my teens (when I started to have physical education teachers who 'really knew' what they were talking about) I developed a chronic pain in my right hip. In fact, like many of my classmates, I had pains in every muscle and joint due, I suppose, to carrying school bags heavier than my own body weight, sitting for hours on end on wobbly chairs and, of course, being taught in physical education that movement is unsafe unless the pelvis is tucked. When I left school, most of these aches disappeared but my right hip was constantly in pain. I ignored it, but I practice yoga regularly, and the time that I really noticed it was after the Shavasana pose, which simply involves lying flat on the back. When I got up from this pose, my right hipbone and the surrounding area would be hurting badly and it would take time to readjust. The level of pain that I experienced never changed. As far as I was concerned, I was doing everything right and my body was in proper alignment, so I just treated it as 'one of those things'. Now that I no longer experience the pain, I believe that, when I got into the Shavasana pose, my hip was forced to align itself correctly, and that the pain was due to the hip suddenly returning to the misaligned position when I got up. The end to my simple story is that this pain disappeared entirely after I had used the Whole Woman posture, as Linda described it, for about a week.

I have now been using the Whole Woman posture for about a month and I am no longer thinking about it all the time, because my body feels comfortable in its natural position. We are taught that we must waste time attempting to conform to what we perceive men as being interested in. If a man prefers wasps to women then he can pray that he will return to his next life as a badger. However, I've never actually met a man or woman who would rather spend time looking at a washboard stomach than being with a whole woman who is loves her natural feminine beauty, so we need to stop kidding ourselves.

A final comment I would like to make is that I have noticed articles on the website mentioning how yoga is predominantly a masculine form of movement, and the Nauli posture of sucking in of the belly is cited. It is quite right to warn us that certain bad methods of yoga are dangerous. However, coming from a family where yoga has been practiced for generations, I must say that, although I spent half my life ignoring them, the true tradition recognises that a woman's Yoni, or Sacred Space (i.e. the whole birth canal) means that she has very different requirements from her male counterpart. It is impatient misogynists who have misconstrued these exercises. A true Indian yogi will emphasise the fact that the belly must be loose and relaxed so that breathing in unrestricted, and that the Nauli posture barely involves the stomach muscles. It is in fact performed by taking an extremely sharp out-breath that creates a vacuum, pushing the internal organs up into the chest, and is achieved through years of supervised breath control. Stomach contractions are not involved in yoga, as they prevent exercises from being performed. I must also comment on belly dance, which is quite correctly referred to on the site as a safe and natural female exercise. This is frequently translated, in the Western world, into a dance form that involves immobilising the midsection by tucking the pelvis (apparently for our safety) and then moving all body parts other than the belly, so choose your classes carefully ladies!

As I have mentioned, I feel lucky to have discovered the Whole Woman posture before experiencing serious problems. I have passed on the advice to other friends of mine who are still in good health, and I hope that more women will come to learn of the posture and its accompanying benefits before it is too late.