Inner Divinity Yoga Blog

My childhood was not ideal. In fact, I felt like an alien and never quite fit in with the family I was born into. There were no boundaries and at times, things were dicey. Tempers flew often and tension was commonplace. This lead to a rather cynical outlook for me and my trust in the human race was very low.

In my early teens, while everyone else was grooving with Heart and Styx, I was marching to the beat of a different rhythm. I had fallen in love – with punk rock music. Early punk really spoke to me – the anger, the sense of alienation, the desire to stick a finger to the “man”. Finally, something made sense to me and seemed to resonate with my world view.

But after years of being angry, I found that I got tired of it. I was sick of finding darkness everywhere I looked and I began to hate hating. In other words, I started to “mellow”. Age does that to a person.

Something else had changed in my life. I started doing yoga. And doing it every day. The more I did yoga and meditated, the less I hated. Suddenly, things that used to get to me simply stopped. I began to feel peaceful.

And then I started inching my way into the yoga community. Finally – a tribe that I could relate to. Uh…not so much. Once again, the alienation came back. I didn’t wear the “proper yoga clothing”. I wasn’t vegetarian. I said the F word. I wouldn’t join Yoga Alliance (too corporate and government for me). Kirtan bored me to tears (I prefer Eminem). The whole “kumbaya” thing started to smell like bullshit to me.

I dropped out and fell away from it. And meditated on that conundrum. I came to the stark realization that I didn’t need to be angry but I didn’t need to assume some “yoga personality” to be peaceful. I could still listen to gangsta rap and punk, I could still eat a steak, I could still not like working for the “man”. And even a little cynicism wasn’t such a bad thing. In other words, it was okay to simply be me as ME.

I still do my practice. I drop in on classes on occasion. I attend workshops when I can. But I will not compromise to fit into any “group” much as I won’t push my body into any pose that doesn’t suit it. Yoga is about being authentic to who you are and finding peace with that.

“It’s a repressive society where you can’t be horrible, I’m not horrible, they made me horrible, I’m just honest.” ~ Johnny Rotten

Om Shanti,
Theresa