Excerpt from Pink Panties & Other Life Lessons (Chapter 7):
I interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a brief history of yoga. Why? Why, you say? To answer, I will tell you to trust me, little cricket, for all shall make sense very soon.
Remember how mindfulness has certain stereotypes in society? Yeah, well yoga has even more. Stereotypes to the tenth power. What do you think of when you hear the word yoga? I bet the images in your head are something along the lines of crazy, bendy poses, clean rooms with soft lighting, and cool leggings (of course). When you think of the type of people who call themselves yogis, you probably think of peaceful people who talk in low voices who have flexible, tall, and skinny bodies and who are ALWAYS happy.
Be prepared for me to shatter your expectations.
I am someone who calls myself a yogi; however, I certainly was not always one. I went to my first yoga class when I was 34. I only went because I suddenly, out of the blue, started having panic attacks and horrible anxiety. All. The. Time. It was terrible. I have never felt so scared in my life. I eventually ended up in therapy and my wonderful, fantastic, superhero of a therapist suggested that I try yoga.
I had so many stereotypes in my head about yoga and yogis that I signed up for a class that took place in a county park. It felt safer than a yoga studio. All those perfect, skinny people bending into pretzely poses with immediate ease? All the soft-spoken humans who had everything figured out and were already perfectly content with life? No way. No no no no way.
So I went to the park, where I was the youngest person in the class. We would walk around the park for 30 minutes and then do some gentle yoga beside picnic tables for another 30 minutes. The ladies in class were loud, hilarious, and honest. We shared stories about our lives…and then we stretched a little. We ended up knowing more about each other than many of our other friends did…and then we breathed a little. It was surprisingly and amazingly fantastic.
The doctors had tried for months to rid me of anxiety and panic, to no avail. A few weeks with these ladies, walking and talking, breathing and bending, and my anxiety was suddenly under control. It was not gone (it will never be gone) but I could see it clearly and I started to manage it.
In my head, though, I did not consider this yoga. We did not do any crazy poses; we did not talk in hushed tones; none of us had anything figured out in our lives. I don’t even think any of us wore leggings (whaaattt?). I kept going because it was working and I had started to look forward to my sessions, but in the back of my mind, the little voice wouldn’t stop reminding me, “You’re not actually doing yoga. You’re not actually doing yoga. You’re not actually doing yoga.”
It took me two years - TWO YEARS - to build up enough courage to go to an actual yoga studio. Even though I enjoyed my park yoga and even though my park yoga teacher taught a class at the local studio, I talked myself out of it for two years. I just couldn’t bring myself to go to a place where people had found inner peace and knew how to live life perfectly. I would be an imposter. I had absolutely nothing figured out, except that I liked to walk and talk to the ladies at the park.
I did eventually go, as I’m sure you have deduced by now. And guess what? No one at the studio had ANYTHING figured out in their lives. There were people of all shapes and sizes. Some wore leggings, some wore sweatpants, some wore shorts. Some people laughed out loud during class and some snored during savasana (the relaxing part at the end). Some were indeed super bendy but many were like me (barely bendy at all). The stereotypes did not hold. The common thread, however, was that every person at the yoga studio was determined to be honest about their lives and were actively trying to grow and learn about themselves. They were an extended version of the ladies in the park.
So…I am now someone who calls herself a yogi.
It’s a nice story and all, you may be thinking, but why did I feel the need to tell you?
Because.
Because because because…
Yoga originated in India over 5,000 years ago. The purpose of yoga, way back then, was NOT to do bendy poses or to wear leggings or to pretend that you have it all figured out. If you go to India, even today, and say that you are doing yoga, people will think that you mean meditation. The original intent of yoga was meditation, or what we have been calling mindfulness. Meditation was the practice that was known to still the mind and the thoughts so that one could reconnect with the true self hiding in the cave behind the heart. Meditation was known to be the pathway to peace.
As people practiced meditation, they started to realize that it was difficult to sit still for long periods of time. Their knees ached, the back was sore, maybe even the shoulders and neck. So they started to find stretches to do before they sat still in meditation. They discovered that doing some poses built strength in the body and also created flexibility. These two things allowed them to sit still for longer periods of time in order to find inner peace.
As the practice of yoga immigrated to the western world, people filtered out the meditation aspect and just focused on the physical body. Over time, this has created the stereotypes that kept me away from a yoga studio for way longer than necessary.
So the real purpose of yoga is much closer to walking and talking with ladies in a park and then sitting still to breathe than it is to what society would have you think about “yoga”.
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