Rebecca Pacheco - Do Your Om Thing: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life

Contents

For my Vav

T his is the part where I tell you that yoga will change your life. Where I enumerate all the ways in which the yoga path will make you happier, healthier, and calmer. Ill use words like bliss and abundance to describe your newfound or rejuvenated yoga self, which you will visualize as glowing, ethereal, and, of course, fit and sexy. I will suggest that I embody all of these qualities and more.

As a practicing yogi for more than half my lifetime, surely I possess mystical characteristics to elevate me above the realms of reality, and once I dedicated myself to the sacred art of yoga (by this, we mostly assume I am referring to impressive-looking stretches), I never again got stressed or sick. (Sickness is so uninspiring, you know.) Never has someone I loved with every piece of my heart chakra dumped me on my ass. And I certainly never worry about trivial things like parking tickets or calories. I shun entire food groups and think you should, too. In fact, I believe there is a direct correlation between levels of enlightenment attained by a yogi and amount of food groups eschewed. I smile incessantlyfrom the hour I awake to the blissful (theres that word again) moments before nodding off into a deep sleep, where I am visited in my dreams by auspicious signs, auras, and guruspossibly even Deepak Chopra.

Theres just one problem: I think the word bliss is woefully overused in yoga circles. And everyone knows that if you want Deepak Chopra to show up in a dream, you need to book him at least two years in advance. So, I guess thats two problems, really.

Theres also the predicament that what Ive described isnt actually yoga; its bullshit. Moreover, even if the imagined yoga utopia were true, it wouldnt really help us understand the core of what yoga is and why its useful anywhere off a yoga mat, which is where most of our lives are lived. What about yoga practice leads to physical, mental, and spiritual transformation in real life?

As you may have noticed, the title of this book is Do Your Om Thing ; this should not be confused with Do What I Tell You to Do . There are plenty of yoga books of the Do-What-I-Tell-You-to-Do variety, especially today, in the era of modern yoga when new styles and interpretations emerge all the time. This years Vinyasa was last years Power Yoga. Before that, Bikram was all the rage, which previously unseated Ashtanga. Many of these books, new and old, serve as remarkable resources, and you can find my favorites in the Recommended Resources section. This just isnt that type of book.

This book (or, its author) understands that you will occasionally get stressed out, overscheduled, come down with the flu, or possibly dumped on your ass by someone you love with every piece of your heart chakra. Swaddling yourself in lululemon and standing on your head will not change this. Believe me, Ive tried. It might make you feel better for a short period, but it wont change your lifenor will becoming vegan, losing ten pounds, going gluten free, or giving up your corporate job. Please dont interpret this as bad news. Its excellent news! Its the liberating reality by which you can finally merge your real life and yoga life. Because the only thing that can bring you the type of enduring peace and balance that ancient yogis sought, called samadhi or enlightenment, is the authentic state of you being you . Dr. Suess said it perfectly, Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You!

You are a human being, meaning you are flawed, prone to illness and aging, and inclined to wake up some days and want to pull the covers over your head until this whole thing called life blows over. Adjustments to your outer life, such as diet, wardrobe, and salary, wont change this much for a sustained period. Of course, we should strive to eat healthfully (more on this later), take pride in our appearance, and feel our work is valued fairly, but the intention behind our choices and the relationship we have with ourselves, independent of body weight, fashion sense, or job title, is more important, both to the practice of yoga and to your overall happiness. In other words, your inner life, the one with which yoga is chiefly concerned, changes your experience of everything. The fundamental problem for modern yogis is how to understand the ways in which yoga influences our inner life at a time when yogas largest and most popular appeals are to our exterior: our bodies, clothes, juice cleanses, and physical poses.

I dont want to diminish the importance of a fulfilling and healthy external life through yoga practice or a healthy lifestyle. Good physical health and confidence are essential to greater well-being and mind/body balance. I love how yoga supports and cultivates these qualities. Im an athlete, often happiest when challenging my physical limits. As a teacher, I am known for pushing my students boundaries both physically and mentally. I regularly coach athletes, including professionals and Olympians, helping them use yoga to gain an edge in competition. I also answer the calls of new moms who know yoga can help them get their bodies back after childbirth, along with people who seek other physical improvements, such as core strength, flexibility, less back pain. You name it.

But these goals represent only a fraction of what yoga has to offer. The fittest athletes and most seasoned yogis I know will concur that their lives and performances are most elevated by the states of mental and spiritual clarity evoked by yoga, as opposed to physical performance. Yoga is not about performance. Its about practice, on your mat and in your life. If you want to get better at anything, what should you do? Practice. Confidence, compassion, awareness, and joyif you want more of theseand who doesnt?yoga offers the skills to practice them. Not to mention have you ever heard someone say, OMG, my life is so much better now that I can do Astavakrasana! I didnt think so. Yoga is about attaining a clearer sense of who you are, how you feel, what you want, and how you interact with the world around you. It does enlighten and brighten your whole life, but only if it comes from you, from the inside outnot from a yoga teacher or guru pedaling their agenda on you.

Maybe you have a corporate job, croissant habit, or religious faith that doesnt condone worshipping Ganesha (the playful elephant-headed deity found in many yoga studios). Somewhere along your yogic path, you intuited that you should feel guilty about these perceived inconsistencies with your yoga practice. You developed a hunch that real yogis dont wear suits or eat meat. They never have fat days or episodes of Facebook stalking an ex. They dont drink too much wine or lie awake at night worried about bills. You might think this, but you would be wrong.

These assumptions are part of our collective perception of modern yoga, which often only serve to broaden the chasm between who we are in yoga class and who we are outside of it. But at yogas core, it seeks to connect us to life in a compassionate waynot ignore swaths of it that dont fit an idealized image. I dont believe in imposing or preaching a blanket approach to everyone to keep some kind of yoga scorecard. Its important that we have opportunities to consider, understand, and question our assumptions about yoga and how it informs the way we live on a daily basis.

To date, modern yoga hasnt successfully resolved how it aligns with the demands of real life, nor should it. This isnt yogas job; its ours. We are the stewards of modern yoga, and we need to pay attention to where its going. Unfortunately, reading a tome of yoga philosophywhich originated several millennia agoisnt as exciting as a hot yoga class. Meanwhile, modern yoga philosophy, which can fuse everything from New Age principles to Christianity to Native American healing rituals to psychology, can be more perplexing. These updated approaches to yoga philosophy are the creations of one teacher who found a combination of ideologies inspiring, but that doesnt mean they are universally inspiring. Its not that these new interpretations and styles of yoga are wrong, bad, or un-yogic; its just that they often prioritize the teachers style or brand of yoga, rather than the honest path of the student.