I was being stabbed in yoga - And my first thought wasn't pain. It was “don’t make a scene.”

Jul 20, 2025
3 min read

Today in yoga, I was being stabbed in the stomach.

Not metaphorically - literally. My insulin pump, which delivers life-saving insulin to my body via a metal cannula that sits permanently inserted under my skin, happened to be positioned awkwardly. With every twist, every stretch and each downward dog, it jabbed me in just the right (or wrong) spot.

Painful. Distracting. Unavoidable.

And yet, my first instinct wasn’t to pause, to move, to leave the room.It was “Don’t make a scene.” “Don’t interrupt the others by walking out, taking it off and closing the door in a full class”.

Let that sink in: I was being physically stabbed - and my first concern was whether I'd disrupt someone else’s flow.

This is the quiet programming that so many of us live with. Especially women. Especially those of us with chronic illness or disability. We are taught, often without words, to be low-maintenance, to blend in, to avoid inconveniencing others at all costs.

And if we can’t? We feel guilty. Embarrassed. Apologetic.

Like we’ve failed at being palatable.

The pressure to be invisible

I stayed in that class, in pain, pretending everything was fine. I focused more on controlling my expression than on my breathwork. I felt awkward, disconnected from my body, and deeply self-conscious. Not because I was doing anything wrong but because I felt different.

Yoga is marketed as this grounding, self-honouring experience. But for those of us living with unpredictable bodies, it can become a minefield of shame and silence. My insulin pump beeped during a class last week, and I panicked, ripped it off, and ran outside.

I wasn’t worried about my health - I was worried about bothering people.

Let that sink in again.

The woman who coughed reminded me what I needed to hear

Later in today’s class, a woman started coughing. You know the kind - slightly awkward, a bit prolonged. Maybe she took a sip of water at the wrong time. Either way, it interrupted the class, and she was clearly mortified.

Afterwards, she turned to the group and apologised.

And I thought - why?

Why do we feel the need to say sorry for existing? For coughing? For needing to step outside? For being visibly human in a room full of other humans?

I saw in her what I feared being myself: “the disruptive one.”The one who breaks the illusion of perfect silence.The one who reminds people that bodies don’t always behave.

Chronic illness is not the problem. Shame is.

The problem isn’t the insulin pump.The coughing fit.The need to leave the room.The problem is the way we’ve been conditioned to believe that any of those things make us lesser, difficult, or undeserving of space.

I’ve lived with chronic illness for most of my life. I’ve had more needles in me than birthdays. I manage multiple medical conditions, and I live in a body that doesn’t play by society’s rules. And yet I’ve spent so long trying to pass as someone whose body does.

This isn’t resilience. It’s internalised ableism.

You can take up space

There’s no tidy ending to this story. I didn’t dramatically storm out or give a TED talk mid-downward dog. I stayed, I winced through the pain, and then I drove home and thought - why do I spend so much of my time worrying what other people are thinking.

But it made me realise something important:

We don’t just deserve to exist in these spaces.We deserve to exist comfortably in them.Without apology. Without shame. Without shrinking.

So whether your device beeps in the middle of a meeting, or your joints click loudly in the quietest part of class, or you need to leave and come back ten times just to function - please know: you are not a disruption.

You are not too much.You are not in the way.