Yoga is for misfits
Today while reading The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, I came across a sutra that made something in my brain light up. In Book two, sutra 5, it reads,
“Ignorance is regarding the impermanent as permanent, the impure as pure, the painful as pleasant, and the non-Self as the Self.”
I’ve always felt a connection with Yoga and I’ve also always felt like I didn’t quite fit in with the mainstream. My relationship with yoga started back about 7 years ago when I lived up in Tallahassee. This was a time in my life when I was deeply unhappy and deeply out of place. I was a people-pleaser. I was a girl who followed her high-school boyfriend to college. Not only that, I was a girl who turned down scholarships to a University in a different city and chose to pay full price to go to a community college near him because I just couldn’t bear to live 4 hours away from him. Imagine how that girl felt when the relationship she chose over everything else in her life fell apart just a few months after arriving in Tallahassee. I was imploding. I was overwhelmed by confusion, sadness, brokenheartedness, and lack of self-esteem. I had no sense of self. I had completely lost myself in this other person and their desires. I was regarding these impermanent feelings as very much permanent. My life felt as if it was over. Yes, at the ripe old age of 18.
I’m not even going to act like I turned directly to yoga and became some zenned out, peaceful, wise being immediately after the breakup. There was a lot of partying, a lot of crying, a lot of begging, a lot of despair and self-sabotage. I had one really great friend at the time who nurtured me, fed me, cared for me, and also joined in on the partying and self-sabotage. Other than that, I was just constantly trying to prove that I was the girl he wanted to be with. I made up my mind that I was all wrong, that I needed to be different, that I needed to mold myself into the copy and paste sorority girl that I was surrounded by.
Not long after the breakup, my grandmother and matriarch of my family got diagnosed with cancer and died very quickly after being diagnosed. If I felt like I was drowning before, this curve ball of a loss helped me to see that I was at least treading water before and now I was completely and utterly drowning.
Somewhere in that mess I found yoga. I think I just couldn’t stand feeling like shit anymore. I had finally gotten accepted into FSU and they offered free yoga classes at the gym. Before I tried the free yoga, I tried going to the free therapy that the school offered but the woman I saw told me that I “seemed to have a good grasp on coping.” I’m not even going to go off on that rant… Anyways, there was one teacher at the gym that I really enjoyed, so I started going regularly. The feeling I felt while practicing reminded me of the feeling I felt while writing. It’s the feeling of coming home, the feeling of remembering who you are or returning to yourself. Writing and yoga are both conduits for my connection to Self, to Spirit, my connection to everything.
At the time, I only knew of Asana, the physical practice of Yoga. I wasn’t intellectually aware that there was more to it, but I was spiritually suspicious. I always felt so good and renewed after class. I would often journal and remember feeling hopeful and more confident on the days that I would go to class. I branched out a bit and started practicing more at home on Youtube, Yoga with Adrienne. I remember going to class at a studio and at the end of class the teacher invited us to grab a piece of paper and crayons and write something down or draw a picture. I drew a hill with a tree and a smiling stick person with the words, “Be here now.” It’s funny how I remember only practicing Asana, but the messages the teachers carried were still subtly finding their way in.
I wasn’t a daily practitioner and I often went through periods (and still do) where I practice everyday or several times a week and then I fall off and drop my practice altogether. After seven years of practicing, it’s a true act of defiance for me to miss more than a week on my mat. I know it is something that helps me to feel better when I’m feeling down. My body starts to ache when I neglect what it craves. To breathe and to move in sync with my breath. Even though I know the physical practice is just a small part and that there are many ways that I practice yoga off of the mat, it really does take all the parts in order for the engine to run smoothly.
In Sutra 5 of Book two, there is a story of a man who enters his house around dusk and sees a snake coiled up in the corner. He calls out for help and people come rushing into his house trying to help retrieve the snake. After some time, an old man wanders in with a lantern and laughs as he reveals that the snake is actually a rope. The sutra goes on to teach two lessons from this story. The first,
“In order to understand a rope as a rope, a light was necessary.”
Yoga showed up for me in a time when I was most lost and feeling like the ultimate outsider, during twilight when I couldn’t tell a rope from a snake. Yoga was and continues to be the old man with the lantern for me. Guiding me towards Truth, helping me to remember who I am and why I am here. The teachings of Yoga ring true in my heart and soul and always have. The book goes on to say,
“Twilight is the most dangerous time. Why? Because in total darkness neither a rope nor a snake could be seen. In broad daylight the rope would obviously be a rope. Only in dull light could the man mistake the rope for a snake. If you are completely ignorant, groping in darkness, you will not even see the “rope”- the pains of this world- and want to understand the truth. So, Yoga is neither for a person who has gained the light nor for the totally ignorant person who doesn’t bother to know anything. It is for the person in between. It is to dispel this ignorance that Yoga is practiced.”
For so long, I have felt like that puzzle piece that sort of fits if you force it even though you really know it’s not the right piece. I’ve been sticking myself in places that I don’t fit, trying to change and morph in hopes of convincing others that I belong. Like the girl who blindly followed her boyfriend 300 miles away from home. I’ve felt like someone who is stuck in the middle. A misfit, someone in between here and there, one foot in, one foot out. And I never understood what it was that drew me towards yoga, so this sutra sheds some light on that.
Yoga is for the person in between. Not the already enlightened, not the ignorance is bliss bimbos, yoga is for those of us out here in the world that see the pains of the world and want to understand the root of them for the sake of leaving things better than we found them. Yoga is for misfits.
Special thank you to my dear friend, Rikki, who recently reminded me that we are in fact *not* puzzle pieces and we don’t have to fit in to feel whole. It’s true!!
If you are at all curious about practicing yoga, Yoga with Adrienne on Youtube is a wonderful place to start. No fancy, intimidating studio, no pressure to spend $100 on lululemon yoga pants to fit in, absolutely no judgement. Just you, moving your body and breathing in the peace and comfort of your own home. I triple dog dare you to try it… and that means you have to.
