Childhood traumas

Minttu writes (in Finnish) about an important issue - about how failures at school when you're a kid stay with you for years or even the rest of your life. I did always very well at school except for one subject: sport. And this has indeed stayed with me since then, and probably will do for the rest of my life.

From 3rd till 6th grade we had a particularly sadistic PE teacher who pretty much killed any joy I ever took from physical exercise. She had the habit of pointing out the worst pupils in the class, picking on their misfortunes and forcing kids to do things they were afraid to do (like gymnastics). She was without a doubt the most hated teacher in our school, and according to the latest new from my old school she still is.

We had better teachers later on, but by then I had learned to associate sports with fear, failure and pain, and I just tried to get away with as little as I possibly could. I was too honest to skip any lessons, so I muddled along but I never enjoyed any of it. I must have tried at some point, but the only times I can remember trying never made any difference in teacher's attitude towards me or my grades. I was always one of those kids who were chosen for a team as one of the last - and the other two where girl who was missing a chromosome and the only fat girl in our class.

It was only years after I finished school I started to take any interest in exercise. For years I was feeling guilty because I wasn't doing any, so I had in my mind chosen couple of things I might want to try if the opportunity rose, and those were Tai Chi and yoga. So when we moved to Bishop's Stortford, and it turned out that 50 meters from our house there was a regular Tai Chi class, I didn't have any choice but to go.

And I'm very clad that I did - I did Tai Chi for several years, and getting into doing some exercise - even if it was only something very gentle and only once a week - and taking pleasure out of it was something that enabled me to start doing more serious exercise later on. I joined a local health club couple of years ago, Dragon wrote me a program, and that started me off on a new path.

Since then I've picked up new favourites: yoga and ashtanga, swimming, Body Balance and Body Pump, and I've (practically) stopped going to the gym (due to my wrist my doctor has recommended that I shouldn't use heavy weights, and where's the fun in that? I'd rather do something else) and I don't do Tai Chi anymore as I don't currently have a teacher.

But still… When I had to take a break this year due to my work, and the recent memories of good experiences had faded I was left with a distrust and dislike again, and this could be something I will never get rid of. That was the reason I kept putting off going to the club, and I'm getting rid of that feeling only very slowly by getting the endorphins flowing again.