Yoga, revisited

As I'm almost three weeks back into my "normal" life, I've found yoga to be slipping away from me. Physically, I still attempt to twist myself into a pretzel three or four times a week. I even take fuller breaths, only after realizing I've been holding my breath for a few seconds in the midst of all life's tensions. I'm playing dress up with yoga, but all the ways that it has unveiled itself at Shoshoni, become less visible as stress, caffeine, and celebrity promises that this lip gloss will make me completely irresistible, come into play. This week, I'd like to get to know yoga again--maybe view it as a few blind dates, although not nearly as expensive, and with less awkward pauses. What a nice thing about yoga, that its silences aren't cause for a bout of "awkward silence turtle."
I'm a reactor. People's thoughts and emotions instantly meld into my own, and I've often felt the "shadow effect" of being others' echoes. This is helpful when one day I'm listening to Slipknot with one friend, and a few hours later I'm going shopping for hot pink shoes with another; floating in between labels has allowed me to experience a myriad of personalities without much judgment. But when a relationship feels one sided, or I want to apologize a million times when my dad yells at the printer right next to me, that's when passivity makes me feel like I'm twisting through the cracks of life, unable to stay long enough to make an impression. So what attracted me to yoga was that its students could make a statement without being flashy--one can only keep up the "bam! I exist!" act for so long. The philosophy of yoga seems solid and pragmatic, but not so much that I feel like I have to do twenty million verses of "om namah shivaya" before my past regrets can finally be left behind me. My mouth would get far too try by then.
Yogis often stress the importance of detachment, hence the resolution not to buy twenty pairs of earrings that end up living in the depths of my purse. But being detached doesn't mean I have to put on a pouty face and be un-interested in people. It just helps me observe their opinions, and recognize our differences, without storing them in the bank of my experiences. That would make for some highly expensive baggage. Through yoga, I'm trying to focus less on a perfect Warrior II pose, and more on my own version of detachment--where I offer my own thoughts, without an engraved invitation to speak. I don't want to become an overly blunt person, but nobody likes the repeat cycle of "what do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" Unless of course, they're watching The Jungle Book. Living in fear of one's own personality is almost as bad as saying everything that's on your mind--you don't make as many enemies, but you also don't enjoy the company of as many friends.
As for the other aspect of my detachment, where I don't shop as though it's my last day on Earth, it's going quite well. I went into Barnes and Noble and Plato's Closet, and didn't buy the entire universe. That's a lot to say, considering there were at least twenty pairs of shiny earrings and ten Jodi Picoult books. But hey, you can still be detached and read library books.

Namaste.