Desire vs Deficit
Desire vs Deficit
Are We Well Enough Yet? Part 2
I saw a lecture by Urmitappa Dutta this week. She used three terms that I found very useful to communicate what I find problematic in some of the language used in yoga classes, and in the marketing and selling of yoga.
Urmitappa introduced the terms “deficit versus desire based research”, “achievement gap” and “complex personhood”. These terms gave me the language to communicate something I was trying to say in the first half of this article but couldn’t quite articulate. In the context of yoga I think that having these terms in mind can help frame how we (yoga teachers) teach and market yoga, and the language we use.
These three terms help to convey the similar idea that in the yoga industry (especially marketing) the focus is often placed in the wrong place. The focus is often on individuals, their “deficit” and as such, people are often reduced to what they are perceived to be lacking. Trauma-Informed Yoga is particularly guilty of placing the focus in perhaps the wrong place. Or as Eve Tuck would call it “centering damage”. Tuck highlights the potential harm of centering damage “It [centering damage] is often used to leverage reparations or resources for marginalized communities yet simultaneously reinforces and reinscribes a one-dimensional notion of these people as depleted, ruined, and hopeless”.
Desire vs Deficit and/or Damage
Tuck proposes that desire-based frameworks can act as an antidote to damage-centered approaches. Desire can come from a place of agency and sufficiency. Whereas the terms deficit and damage often insinuate a lack, a vulnerability and/or a dependency.
Therapeutic techniques often focus on the individual’s deficit rather than their desires, which makes sense to some extent because therapeutic techniques exist to alleviate distress or discomfort. So acknowledging what the distress and discomfort is, is of course very useful - if not crucial.
However, any therapeutic technique that creates dependency, makes people feel as though they have a deficit, or makes people feel like they could be doing life “better” or more “wholesomely”, perhaps has the potential to do more harm than good. They are not supporting autonomy. I would call these deficit-based therapeutic techniques.
Because yoga can be used as a therapeutic technique, the ‘symptoms’ yoga can be beneficial for are often communicated. For example, certain yoga poses/practices are often sold as fixing and/or alleviating any or all of the following: tension, anxiety, digestive issues, sleep problems, self-esteem etc.
But does communicating the ailments that yoga can purportedly fix accidently mean that people are often encouraged to focus on their symptoms (their deficiencies) and the ‘gap’ between where they are and where they could be? Because we (yoga teachers) think we have a tool, like a hammer, do we see (and communicate and market) everything as a nail – a problem to be fixed by yoga?
Constantly being surrounded by things to drink, eat, not eat, do, not do, certain poses to do, ways to sleep better, ways to practice yoga better, to become more compassionate, more kind, more mindful. Even if it is not said in an explicitly deficit-focused way, it’s certainly easy to feel like there is a deficit in how you’re living your life. That you’re not enough.
How do we have a range of therapeutic techniques available and easily accessible without pushing them on to people, without accidently implying that people have a deficit that needs to be fixed?
How can we and our therapeutic techniques recognise individuals’ complex experiences, needs and plans for the future and respond to this through our teaching practices?
Achievement gap
Urmitappa also used the term “achievement gap” which helps to illuminate what is accidentally often being said in yoga classes and marketing.
Urmitappa used this term to identify all the places and times where the focus was placed on the individual’s deficiency and the individual blamed for said deficiency, rather than the perpetrator, system or structure that actually caused this perceived deficit.
Individuals not achieving enough is often not the problem.
I imagine this in relation to sexism. If men were to get together and go “I think we need to help the women”, I would be annoyed – I don’t need their ‘help’ to achieve, to thrive. I need people to stop being sexist – I need people, systems and structures changed so that they don’t benefit men more than women.
The individual often doesn’t have a deficit. The system that doesn’t benefit many – the white neoliberal, patriarchal, system - has a deficit.
The term achievement gap helps to highlight when we are placing the focus in the wrong place: on the individual and their ‘deficits’, rather then the systems and structures they live within.
I think this same focus on the individual – removed from their context – happens a lot in yoga. And I think there is a fine line between providing tools that are therapeutic and encouraging people to ‘perfect’ themselves.
Trauma-Informed Yoga
By and large the Trauma Informed Yoga (TIY) movement is great! However again, I think we need to be aware of pathologising people – of focusing on people’s perceived deficits or of centering the damage that may have happened to that particular community or individual.
The concept behind TIY is fantastic – more accessible, compassionate yoga and greater awareness that people are walking into spaces with a diverse range of experiences and lives and will experience different barriers to yoga.
But are we using too broad a brush stroke? That is, ‘trauma’ frameworks have been employed to represent and respond to a huge range of human responses, but given it’s currently one of the only responsive models to complex experiences, it also runs the risk of assuming that a huge range of challenging and traumatic experiences manifest as ‘trauma disorder’ and can be responded to through one mode.
By calling it trauma-informed yoga the focus is on the deficit or the ‘damage’ and many experiences are labeled as trauma, which may not always be appropriate.
Why not just call it accessible yoga?
Most people will experience a traumatic event in their life - about 5-10% of those will go on to develop maladaptive coping strategies. For most of those people symptoms will last a year or less.
Do we assume that people who have experienced trauma don’t already have sophisticated coping strategies?
And for those that would like therapeutic techniques for symptoms from traumatic experiences are we placing the focus back on the trauma rather than their already existing tools that soothe and relieve discomfort?
I also, personally wouldn’t want to be defined by my disorder. Something I have experienced is not the totality of me.
Trauma-informed yoga is actually taught in a way that is desires-based and autonomy supportive: Invitational, non-commanding, promoting agency. Why not let the language reflect that? Rather than using language that suggests people are walking around with trauma and can’t hold it: that they need to be ‘helped’.
Complex personhood
Avery Gordon’s term complex personhood challenges the assumption that individuals don’t hold a range of experiences. These ranges of experiences, beliefs and abilities may include experiencing a traumatic experience yes, but a person is always much more than that.
The term complex personhood challenges the reduction of people to a disorder, a minority group or a stereotype.
Each person is complex and more than just a sensation, mood, disorder or stereotype (eg, you are not anxiety or trauma – that is something that you have experienced and perhaps continue to). So how can our communication acknowledge that people are complex, sufficient and have likely developed sophisticated coping strategies to live in the world? And if they want to, if they desire a certain experience (such as yoga) then this is simply where and when to find it?
People may have experienced trauma and have excellent coping strategies. People may have experienced trauma and have excellent relationships. People may have experienced trauma and have no side effects. People may have experienced trauma and something completely unexpected or uncontrollable may cause distress. All of these can be simultaneously true and the idea of complex personhood allows us to imagine that - to hold these multiple truths.
Conclusion
I don’t want to problematise something that isn’t a problem – like this hilarious Betoota Advocate article demonstrates so well.
And I want to make this clear – I think yoga can be a fantastic therapeutic technique. I’m not saying don’t do yoga or don’t think about ways to make it more accessible, or think about whom might be in the room and what needs they might have.
TIY has great intentions and the use of evidence-based practices in TIY has really paved the way for more accessible yoga. However, the focus on peoples’ deficits that are perceived to need “helping” or “fixing” can be condescending and not supportive of agency.
Maria Popova says it so well “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is naïveté”. So perhaps, thinking things through thoroughly is useful.
This is my hope:
We can make classes accessible so if people desire to come they can.
We can ensure that the language used in classrooms and in marketing is not overtly or implicitly suggesting that people need the product, experience or advice in order to be ‘better’ or to live life ‘better’.
I hope we spend less time focusing on the perceived deficits and problems experienced by individuals and more time on the structures and systems that are causing them.
I hope when providing therapeutic techniques we focus on people’s strengths and desires and acknowledge that people are complex and capable.
I hope to facilitate a class where people don’t feel pressured to come, where they don’t feel like they have to achieve something or get somewhere. I hope to facilitate a class that is desires-based. Come if you want to come, do what makes you feel good, don’t do what doesn’t make you feel good. Not from a place of deficit or lack - no ‘practices’ you have to add into your life if you don’t want to, nowhere to necessarily ‘get to’.