I first started practicing yoga sometime around 2003.

I started after watching my older sister following along to a video in the living room.

She started with just half of the video because it was so hard. Some days she would start it and then stop it at after 20 or 30 minutes. Then the next day, rather than rewinding it and doing that part all over again, she picked up wherever the video left off and finished it that way.

No pressure. No judgement.

I remember watching her in awe, confused at how she didn’t need to shift around like I did because I always felt antsy. She was four years older. It was her junior or senior year of high school.

Slowly, we started doing it together. I followed along in the back of the living room. I would only do it for 10 minutes at a time at first and then slowly it caught fire in me just like it did in her. Soon, our mom started doing the video too. We didn’t have yoga mats and we didn’t have Lululemon yoga pants. We didn’t have cell phones so we didn’t take yoga selfies. We didn’t do hashtags, we didn’t compare the way our bodies looked in the poses. We didn’t worry about what we wore.

I remember wearing a regular bra (not a sports bra or anything) and a spaghetti strap shirt and baggy board shorts. We didn’t talk about it or act like it was changing our life. There was literally nothing to it. We did the same video, we never wanted to try anything new because what we had felt so good.

It was just yoga.

It was fun and cool and it was our secret because nobody bragged about it or took pictures of themselves doing it. We didn’t talk about it at school with our friends. There wasn’t a studio we were trying to afford to be able to go. It was our video that we could practice along to as often as we wanted, together or apart.

A lot has changed. It’s absolutely mind-blowing how present yoga is in the media now, especially social media. The trends, the fashion, the equipment we are told we need to buy. I love my nice Manduka mat, but I know I don’t need it. I do post pictures or videos on social media of myself on my mat here and there, but when I do I also feel super weird about it. Like, I always ask myself before I hit post, “why?”

I still remember just gripping to the carpet in my parent’s living room, relying on the sweat on the bottoms of my feet and palms to not slip around too much in downward dog. I remember when I didn’t even think to lust after poses like fallen angel or handstand or eight-angle. I remember when I learned for the first time that handstand is even part of a yoga practice.

So much has changed.

After dabbling in the commercial yoga world, joining a studio, posting poses on social media, helplessly lusting after poses, wearing Teekis and mentally feeling like crap for not practicing #yogaeverydamnday I definitely need to rant about how I miss my secret yoga days with my sister in our living room.

Now I am practicing going back to the beginning. Wondering who I am without the hashtags, the expensive yoga pants, and even the sports bras.

Because I can do yoga in baggy jean shorts and a regular bra and I should. It’s so important to feel like I own it. It’s mine so I can do it however I want. I don’t have to look like any of the dancers, yogis, models or contortionists on my Instagram feed. I don’t have to listen to music or know what matsyendrasana means. It is time to go back to the beginning.

Maybe there is room for Instagram in the back of your living room when you decide to honor yourself and follow your own practice. Maybe the yoga of the social media world and the yoga of our hearts can coexist. I just hope that we all find the courage to unplug when we need to.

Because yoga is about you, not your followers.

Yoga is about your heart, not the number of likes your picture gets, or what brand your stretchy pants are. I think the best way we can honor our bodies is to take what we need from the media and be really aware of when we need to reach for our blindfold. Because the last thing our bodies need is to feel inferior to a picture of someone we don’t even know doing a pose that is supposed to ignite joy, not self-doubt. Never forget that your yoga is yours.

  Relephant: 

What Does Your Yoga Look Like?

 

Author: Wendy Belanger

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Amy/Flickr