Toddler Yogi

I walked down the street this morning at 6 am. I am rarely up this early (it’s 3 am Pacific Time in the US …at 6 am here). Why have I decided to do the totally ridiculous act of waking up at 6 in the morning? Well, I found a morning Ashtanga practice group for the week.

In the Mysore room, ridiculous stuff is said to us are said to us like “Feel more fear!”. Ashtanga is a revered, sacred lineage in the yoga tradition. Only crazy people do Mysore. It’s true. There’s a screw loose or something if you’ve decided to walk into a room at 6 in the morning and not be fully committed to sleeping. Ashtanga is the grandfather, the grandpa of modern yoga and it’s considered the tree that other yoga styles branch from. Or, that all of the “commodified” yoga that we practice in the west comes from. It’s a thorough practice that does have health benefits, I can attest that when I practice regularly I feel like I have more energy and it’s easier for me to maintain a more positive outlook on life. However the practice is very challenging. It includes sun salutations, Warrior 1s and 2s, forward folds, back bends, and of course, a handstand. Sometimes while I practice I wonder why I’m even doing it at all, because my body aches, or I feel grumpy, or just something pisses me off for god knows why. Admittedly, the real challenge for me in the Mysore room, as an adult is handing over my agency to another adult, who is telling me what I should do.This morning was one of those mornings that just felt, more difficult than it had to be. Ashtanga is a challenging practice, it has a rhythm to it. It’s something with details and ins and outs and up dogs and down dogs and plenty to obsess over, and upon, on a rainy day or really on any day.

For me, this morning was just, rough. Something about the way my body felt walking into the room…mostly, just exhausted. I spent a fair amount of time outside yesterday and my primary mode of transportation in Mexico has been by bike. So I am biking, absolutely everywhere. By the time I get to yoga my body is sore and I love the practice because I love the practice, but truthfully the past month I have enjoyed being a lazy yogi, and the past 3 days have been my first time practicing yoga in the morning..for 3 days in a row, in a very long time. Sleep would have felt magical. Being a lazy yogi comes with a benefit and it also comes with a cost, and I didn’t want to be heckled by a teacher if I didn’t show up for the intensive because I felt like I needed to sleep in. I went to practice anyway.Peer pressure, or something like that.

This brings up this thing that always kind’ve sits in the back of my mind as a yoga practitioner. Sometimes diligence and organization serves, and sometimes it just fucking sucks.

I was exhausted this morning, I really did try my best to get to sleep at a decent hour but it didn’t totally work. So I woke up from a sound slumber to hurry myself into a room full of full grown adults who are sticking their butts in the air. This is a moment where I begin to question my life choices. I bought a yoga mat from Walmart the first week that I was here, and something about buying a yoga mat at Walmart actually made me feel afraid. I always feel a little weird when I buy yoga mats, to be honest. I am practicing an ancient practice, and yet…I am practicing on a mat made from rubber..and who knows where or how this rubber was processed. I would also like to point out that the words “yoga” and “Walmart” are just two words in the English language that there shouldn’t be crossover in. Yet there is. Just like the words “Burning Man” and “Walmart” shouldn’t cross over, but hey, this is the real world, full of hope and weirdness. Like, maybe the word “yoga” and “Gandhi” or “Walmart” and “mustard” - but “Walmart” and “yoga” are just overlapping. The same teacher that told us to “FEEL MORE FEAR” also asserted emphatically to one of the other adults yesterday that she was the “teacher” and “not a peer” to one of the other adults in the room. I had a flash back to kindergarten, where the adult in the room has to assert authority over the little kids in the room. I also had this flash back to a yoga teacher training I did when I was 19 where the teacher trainer told us that we should sit on any student that we felt like was overstepping us as teachers, in an animalistic sort of way. This moment in my yoga journey always kind’ve…disturbed me.

One of the aspects I love about yoga is the mood lighting, and the chanting. The syllables of Sanskrit feel foreign and familiar at the same time, and practicing in the early morning by candle-light feels special. Like any spiritual practice, there are flaws in the practice of yoga. Just like any street in Playa del Carmen, there are cracks in it. And as Leonard Cohen once said “the crack is how the light gets in”.

I almost feel like if a bunch of yoga practitioners cleared out a room in Walmart and started practicing in there - it would be more holy than practicing in a set yoga studio. This would eliminate the issue that we have as “good western people” of gentrification. Why gentrify yoga? Why not just take over some office spaces people aren’t using and say “hey, this is ours”. We just keep building and building in an effort to “STIMULATE THE ECONOMY” and the only thing we’re stimulating is a declining mental health rate. We should just replace the phrase “STIMULATE THE ECONOMY” with “TAKE THIS PILL” and get really honest with what and where we’re at as a social group. We could also use the words “STIMULATE THE ECONOMY” as a pseudonym for “USE MORE PLASTIC” or something. 

If we as humans just started taking over mundane spaces and doing cool shit in there, eventually we may not actually need to do things like rent out “yoga studio spaces”. So much drama would be avoided…of course, other drama would take its place. Even in places as “enlightened” as a yoga studio or at a yoga retreat or just…so it goes…adults can still act like toddlers. In fact, I would say that the rate of adults acting like toddlers is higher than usual in the modern world. Sometimes I feel like people are just proud of the fact that we are all adults with emotional issues who are basically pretending that we are smart enough to put one foot in front of the other, while we’re all just basically grown people walking around in diapers, as if it’s almost trendy. Could someone just stage a Gucci fashion show with a bunch of adults walking down the runway in diapers? I think that this is the true evolution of the modern adult.

To me, yoga is just a fun way to use my body. Yoga has also represented rebellion, and a place to discuss agency. What is agency? From what I have grasped, agency is sort’ve like free-will. Try this thought experiment: imagine that you are walking down the street in your favorite tree-lined neighborhood, and all of a sudden, someone kidnaps you and throws you in the back of their neon sedan. You are in the back of this neon sedan and they are driving 85 mph, so there’s no way that you can extract yourself safely from the neon sedan. The psychopath driving the sedan at 85 mph informs you that this is a heist! You have been officially kidnapped.

They take you to a house on a tree-lined street, and of course, because you’re kidnapped, you are just arbitrarily thrown into a small room. The room has a window and a door.

You’re in total shock, right? You have just been kidnapped by this random person, and thrown in a car. They have kidnapped you and driven at least an hour away from the street you were walking down. You’re not drugged, and you’re lucid enough to realize that you’re on the ground floor..and the window is…open. In fact, it looks like this window is on the ground floor and the person who has kidnapped you and placed you in this room left the window, strangely, unlocked. At this moment in time, you have the option to get out. You can use your free will to open the window, jump out (because it’s a first floor window), and run back to civilization.

To remain a “free agent” you have to jump out the window and run. At this moment in time, you still have free agency. So..what do you do in this moment of agency and choice? You jump out the window and you run as fast as you can away from your kidnapper. You are lucky that you can jump out the window. If you were locked to a chair in the room, however, you would not have the agency to leave the situation. By running away, you regain agency. Agency = choice; Agency = freedom.

I feel that often-times, in the modern world, many people have much more agency than we give ourselves credit for.

Parts of the yoga world that have made me feel..defeated and not like teaching yoga have been the parts that focus on vanity and the outer appearance of our bodies. The lululemon yoga pants. The instagram videos of tiny blonde girls in matching outfits talking about hip flexors. I vividly remember beginning my teaching path, and my mom buying me a pair of fancy Lululemon yoga pants and me never wanting to get on a yoga mat again. I didn’t want to wear them, I wasn’t interested in these fancy yoga pants. To me, they represented rich people who were spending their money on plastic surgery and botox, who didn’t have enough compassion to realize that not everyone in the world was concerned with plastic surgery and botox. Of course, this is indicative of the values of the people in the town I grew up in, and not indicative of every woman or man who does yoga. It’s easy to be enchanted with modern yoga and just as easy to become disillusioned.

My yoga practice and the people I have surrounded myself within the yoga community have encouraged me to get into just enough trouble while also staying out of too much trouble. This is a tried and true lesson I am grateful for, especially when I feel limited. Last spring, I was sitting on top of a car in Oregon one day (outside of a grocery outlet), feeling blue, and this man approached me and started talking to me. He told me to just “follow the lights and the music”. I was feeling sad and hopeless that day, and because of this random interaction with a kind stranger, within 24 hours my perspective had completely changed. I really did just follow the lights and the music that evening and took deep breathes and life just got better. We truly have the power as human beings to uplift other people around us. The whispers are always there. Just how like things can shift quickly in a negative direction, things can shift quickly in a positive direction for us and the intricate and beautiful gears of the universe are always turning. The words “Feel more fear” struck me - like…get out of your comfort zone and your own habits. Sometimes I feel like a little toddler yogi and not a grown up, and I guess that’s part of the practice too. Maybe I should have a fashion show and have one of the models wear a cloth diaper while holding a sign that says “Feel More Fear”. Who knows. Namaste.