Yoga

For an inviting oasis of spiritual health, yoga studios tend to be pretty awkward. In fact, there was only one place where I felt more self-conscious and that was in high school during Phys-Ed. Bold statement, I know. But there something about stepping barefoot into a candle lit room flanked by Buddha statuettes and filled with earth-loving vegans who are inclined to “adjust” other people by touching them in questionable regions that’s intimidating and pretentious. That or the silence.

This occurred to me today when I walked into the lobby of a studio and lingered uncomfortably while the instructor sat behind her desk and ignored me. I thought natural human graces prompted eye contact when someone is present, but I could be wrong. Perhaps I disrupted her from her meditation when my vocal chords meekly coughed “hi,” but she seemed equally as startled as irritated. And I knew that by the tight-lipped board straight smile she replied with. “Is this is the 5:30 class?”

“Mhmm.” Still with that smug grin. It’s a good thing I was about to align my chakras or otherwise I would’ve been compelled to align my fist with her face. Many of my encounters with yoga instructors have felt similar to this, and the hypocrisy is maddening. The instant they start waxing tolerance and non-judgment I feel judged. And that hippie-dippy bullshit they sometimes pull makes me think they’re just posers. But regardless of my opinions of the imposter “yogis” who come my way, there is a reason why I still participate. I unrolled my mat on the studio floor, crossed my legs and closed my eyes, and focused on the light.

The beauty of yoga is that, despite that at times it makes me revisit the discomfort of my middle school years, it still allows me to transcend my self-consciousness and tap into a spirituality that is hard to access outside the studio. The art of yoga itself, each posture and pose, every cycle of breath… There is something about it that defies the real world but somehow enters a truer reality. And I think that’s why people participate – they want to experience an attachment to something greater, something genuine. Yogic precepts force you to realize that we exist in a series of tiny insignificant realms that comprise the universe. But conversely we, as entities in this realm, can still be significant contributions to something bigger. The moment we stop taking ourselves too seriously to be patient and too arrogant to be grateful, the walls of the matrix fall away. That philosophy creeps back into my head with every vinyasa. Yoga recognizes that our limited world is a system, and we can be more than just a cog in the wheel should we choose to resist it. It’s simultaneously humbling and motivating.

By no means am I an expert. Nor am I about to renounce my possessions and relocate to India. But I am someone who has been affected by yoga, felt a spiritual shift as a result of my practice. There are still moments when I throw tantrums in my head when my instructor, poser or not, adjusts my body or makes me instantaneously hate yoga with some contorted posture – a clear indication that I still have a ways to go to enlightenment… or maturity, for that matter. But I’m getting closer. And maybe, when I get there, I will discover that the self-consciousness I had once felt was strictly self-prescribed, and that perhaps I was wrong about all those yoga instructors after all.