Living Up to the Yogi Persona

I’m having one of those days where I feel like my brain is in a fog. Answers come slowly to me and my multi-tasking skills are at a bare minimum. If you didn’t know me and tried to have a conversation with me you would think I was rather special.  It's days like this where coffee is my best friend. Oh how I love my coffee!

As a yoga teacher, especially at parties where food is involved, if the topic of diet comes up I’m always labeled as a vegetarian. As I go to take a bite of my steak I get this puzzled look followed by the comment that they thought I was a vegetarian.  Many traditions of yoga have you follow a vegetarian based diet, this is due to ahimsa, do no harm. This not only applies to eating meat but to digesting anything in your body that would do it harm (such as the lovely caffeine in my coffee). Of course ahimsa’s meaning is much broader than just applying to food, and I will cover that in a later blog.

The point I’m trying to get to, and it may take me a bit longer today than usual so bear with me, is that as a yoga teacher sometimes people picture you living a specific lifestyle. The longer you do yoga the more affect it tends to have on you. Your diet or lifestyle may begin to change. These tend to be for the positive. But we are all different and we need to respect that. Not all yogis are the same. We're about as varied as the various styles available. For example, did you know there is "swearing yoga".

When I first started teaching I was doing a lot of reading into the philosophy of yoga, specifically the Yoga Sutra’s. This text explained about the life you should be living as a yogi. This led me to try vegetarianism. It wasn’t for me. No matter how much vegetable protein I put into the diet I was constantly hungry, my body needed meat.  I felt a bit defeated at first, but then realized that by judging myself I wasn’t following the Ahimsa rule. I was hurting myself. So to follow the rule I got creative. I only ate meat that was sustainably raised. As for the coffee, well we all have our vices and I’m ok with that.

My advice to you, if you are trying to live up to the yoga lifestyle and finding that it's not a perfect fit, teak it. You must do what feels right for you and make sure that if someone is watching you that you are proud of the example you will set. I talk with teachers all the time about wanting to teach online classes and some will give me this look like I’m breaking the sacred code of yoga. Instead of getting offended I explain my reasoning (spreading yoga to places it otherwise may not ever make it to) and hopefully broaden their view a bit. I don’t personally care if they agree or not as I’m happy in my views (as are they) and the way I live my life. We agree to disagree.

I truly believe that the secret to happiness is living a life you choose. One that makes you proud to face the world each day. If you aren’t to that point perhaps you should figure out why. Write down things in your life that you love and feel make you a better person. Then write down the things you think you need to change or work on. Start with small changes and eventually you will get to where you want to be.

You can't expect to change someone, they believe what they want to believe and it is good to respect that. People have their reasons. We can share our views about life, but how they choose to live is up to them. Stand up for who you are and what you belive in, just make sure you know what and why that is. Also make sure to finish chewing your steak before you start explaining...