about one Yoga retreat he went on where the teacher spent 40 minutes outlining her life-history at the introductions over the first night's dinner - he lost it, I think that's a legitimate response.
There's nothing that would make me walk out of a retreat faster. I get my inner clipboard out:
- Egotistical? Tick
Actually there's only one check on the inner list before I'm out.
And it's just got worse with social media and the need to publicize yourself to make connections and money.
Absolutely. It's why I just couldn't be a yoga teacher. I just couldn't find the energy or the will to promote myself in an image focussed world - again, it went against everything I'd been taught and believed in. And it made me ill, because my ego started working overtime too - I don't 'look' like a 'yogi' - what a load of codswallop to headfuck myself with. But no way was I going to compete with 21 year olds doing forearm stands.
I do think a lot of people who get into this 'game' are narcissists - I was going to write a post about it but I forgot or just didn't want to get into it. And the people who find them are usually really needy, and can't look within for the answers because they don't know how, or have been raised in circumstances where they need a leader or guru or father figure to guide them. It's not that I don't understand - it's human psychology - but that's never been for me. Whilst I love learning from people wiser than me, and love listening and reading from people who are essentially sayiing the same messages but in beautifully different ways that constantly reminds me of the path, I know that the real answers are within.
Yoga (I dont mean just the physical postures but the whole 8 limbs) helps me find my way - I'll never follow a 'woke' leader whose ego is bigger than their extra large chai hemp milk latte.
Tell me about it - thankfully I'm quite inflexible and wouldn't touch public yoga with a bargepole anyway, which I'd need to reach it given my inflexibility.
Practising on my own however, is fine, but I'm protected - I can shield myself from all of that, I can just imagine how horrendous it is - it's sort of fair enough in gym culture, but when it's dressed up as something extra in Yoga, oh god I just can't stand it!
Hahaha, I love it when people say 'I'm too inflexible for yoga' - I love the response 'that's like saying you're too dirty to take a shower'. The reason you do physical yoga is so you become more flexible - but it's also about strength, and philosophy too. To me yoga isn't about the physical at all - that's just one limb. Through physical movement, you access the deeper layers of the body, mind and 'soul', as trite as it sounds. It's a fascinating subject. But yeah - ugh - all that glossy yoga stuff with leggings and pretty girls and people pretending to be gurus, ugh.