My Yego Breakthrough

I used to work in the revelatory yoga industry (and yes, it’s an industry, and quite an industry it is). We were real big on our yoga breakthroughs back then. Breakthroughs, in the yoga industry, are when you reach a breaking point with your physical endurance and suddenly find yourself sniffling and sobbing on your yoga mat until that eureka moment when you realize…. SOMETHING.

Something really amazing that is definitely going to rock your world. And usually it does, at least until the end of that yoga bootcamp retreat.

I had a Yoga Breakthrough myself just yesterday. I haven’t had one in years, so I was excited. This is how my breakthrough went:

See, I was “good” at yoga once, AND had awesome hair.

It was Monday. I knew it was my only opportunity to go to yoga all week. I’ve been feeling lazy, and sloppy, and out of shape, and all of those guilt-driven, insecure, and vain things that motivate you to go to this allegedly spiritual experience in the first place. I whined to Vanessa that I didn’t really want to go. She said that I should just do it; I definitely wouldn’t regret it.

So, I went. Begrudgingly.

Now, as a little background, I taught yoga for ten years. I’ve been practicing for about 12 or 13 years. I managed yoga studios for a long time. I worked for a well-known yoga personality and traveled all around the place waiting on him hand and foot in the name of yoga. I’m no stranger to yoga. I used to be what they call “good at it.”

But somewhere along the line I seem to have lost it.

So when I got to yoga on Monday, there was a sub. This dude—let’s call him Scott—was a stranger to me. I was just another miscellaneous yoga student to him. And I was pretty happy about that. I prefer to be completely anonymous and basically bordering on anti-social when I take a yoga (or any other kind of) class (or workshop, or retreat, or whatever).

I’m just going to say that I did not have a good attitude to begin with. I didn’t want to be there. I was at the point of almost resenting the fact that I had to be there, as if someone else had actually made me go. As if I was there against my will. Which, of course, I wasn’t.

This is what my yoga practice looks like now. 99% of the time.

And I had been counting on a low-key and predictable class during which I would “modify” (my code word for nap through most of it).

I did not enjoy the class. Scott was actually a great teacher. He was charismatic, confident, outgoing, knowledgeable, connected, energetic… all that good stuff. He was a MOTIVATOR. In short, his class was really effing hard and not at all what I had been expecting.

(Yes, see, there’s that monster known as attachment again.)

Anyway, it wasn’t him; it was me.

Honestly? I just can’t take one more minute of the YEGO, the dialog, the affected speech, the phony humility, the bootcamp-disguised-as-spirituality, the elevated heat, the suppressed oxygen level, the pecs, the abs, the overly vivid descriptions of muscles and joints, the “always listen to your body” side-by-side with the “today we’re going to push way beyond our comfort zone” and the dirty looks when you don’t.

I used to really love all of those things. I used to say and do those things myself, in my own yoga classes. I really believed them. I got it.

So what happened to me? Why do I hate yoga so much now? I started to spin out. I almost started to cry (which would not be an unusual reaction for me under any circumstances but luckily, this time, I think I was actually too dehydrated to shed tears).

Then, I had my breakthrough.

An epiphany!

I realized that, in fact, I don’t actually have to go to yoga. There are lots of people in the world who don’t do yoga. Lots. And a lot of them are pretty cool. And they’re not even all fat.

And I’m about to start the sequel to The Artist’s Way with my besties. It’s called Walking in This World. It’s all about walking. I’m thinking, out with the yoga, in with the walking.

I won’t ever get sick of walking. I promise.