Your Perception of Yoga

I've got a dirty little secret that I'm almost ashamed to admit -- I've actually watched an episode or two of Bravo's new reality show, The Millionaire Matchmaker. Have you lost respect for me yet? What can I say -- my curiosity got the best of me. Although I found the show to be captivating in a horrific sort of way, I'm happy to say that I'm not choosing to spend my time watching regularly. The one thing that really stuck with me from my limited viewing of this show was, however, quite interesting.

It seems like everyone on this show wants to find love, a soul mate. Sounds lovely, right? Yet despite these grand intentions, the participants don't want to spend time going out to dinner (apparently, lunch is a quicker meal), they only want a soul mate that meets certain physical requirements (funny, I thought that a soul mate didn't have anything at all to do with physical characteristics -- after all, that's why the term "soul" is used), and they seem to believe that money makes a soul connection all that deeper. Hmmmm...so you don't really just want a soul mate -- you want a soul mate that's a certain height, a certain weight, with perfectly symmetrical features and a very large bank account. See where I'm going with this?

This is exactly why I don't watch this show regularly. I got disgusted. All of the whining ("I just want a nice guy/gal," "I want to find somebody that I connect with," "I want someone to love me and treat me well") with none of the willingness. These people claim they want substance when all they really care about is form. I laughed out loud when one woman claimed that she "just" wanted love and then turned down a date with a man because he was 5' 9". Gee, does that mean all soul mates have to be over 6 feet? She needs to be a bit more specific about what she wants -- she doesn't want a plain ole soul mate but a soul mate that's handsome, is over 6 feet, and has a net worth in the 7-figure range. Oooooohhhhh, now I get it.

I have a different take on things. I firmly believe that the 5' 9" guy COULD be this woman's soul mate -- if it were really a true love connection that she was interested in. Of course this woman will never know because she isn't giving this man (or a decent-sized portion of the male population, for that matter) a chance. She's not open to experience -- she only wants to see the world through her own little filter. She's not seeing the forrest for the trees.

When I see people out there getting all meticulous about their yoga practice -- they have the right clothes, the right mat, their form is "perfect," they have studied with all of the "right" teachers, they can twist their body into pretzel-like postures -- I wonder what would happen if they put function over form. If you let go of your perception of yoga (a perfect Crow pose, a brisk-paced practice to burn off that dessert you had last night, a "workout" that's "hip and sexy" right now, etc.) what would happen? Maybe you'd find your soul mate, so to speak? Maybe you'd find yourself?

I firmly believe that we short-change the practice of yoga in this society. We've relegated it to the world of fitness, when it's actually a holistic practice. We see images of "perfectly executed" poses and we think that's what yoga is -- it's perfection, it's beauty, it's surface. What if we went deeper?

I think if we did we'd find true love.

Namaste!

Comments

[Diane]

Linda --
You're too funny! It's sad that we have to spell it out, isn't it?

[linda]

"I firmly believe that we short-change the practice of yoga in this society. We've relegated it to the world of fitness..."

once again, you're preaching to the choir. I've written about this more than once and have had lots of comments about it.

a friend told me this morning that in a yoga class she was teaching a woman actually said to her, "this is a FITNESS class! F I T N E S S!"

and yes, she actually spelled it out for her....

HA!