Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis presents:

In our latest, greatest Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis, Waylon talks with Alexandria Crow, an internationally-respected yoga instructor who leads trainings and workshops globally. She encourages each student to respect their own uniqueness, instead of conforming. We talk about yoga and perfectionism, modeling and body image, spiritual materialism, losing heart, integrity, and humor along the path. Good stuff!

“I don’t begrudge the old version of me. We’re doing the best we can with what we know at any given time.

And so it’s like, well, all right. Now I know more. I have this mission: I want to include people. So I better not do things that lead people to believe they have to have some kind of look or ability to participate.” ~ Alexandria Crow

Alexandria’s guiding principles are around accessibility and inclusivity, regardless of what physicality they’re coming with.

Alexandria: If you could get rid of the original ‘I need to fix myself’ idea, then you might see things differently. Nothing needs to be fixed except the fact that you thought you needed to be fixed in the first place.

Waylon: Yeah. We’re all ‘othering’ ourselves. We’re all being mean little bullies to ourselves.

A clip of our conversation: 

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“[There are] demands on us in one way or another—things we’ve been told we need to do or to change, that just don’t fit and don’t square up. We spend all this time trying to jam ourselves into those expectations.

What yoga has helped me understand is that all that is superimposed from the outside, and those things aren’t inherently true about me.

I don’t have to believe them.

I don’t have to believe everything my mind says. Not everything it says is valid. I can move from having to fit myself into those expectations to acceptance of self. I’m the only one that has my unique perspective. You’re the only one that has yours. It would behoove all of us to engage with that and say, okay: this is who I am in my totality.

Now I’m going to engage with the world from that angle, instead of trying to fix myself or change myself to meet these expectations that don’t square up with me.” ~ Alexandria Crow

Or, listen to the podcast:

“I don’t really have the capacity to conform, to do the thing that everyone else is doing.

But I tried for a long time. I did all the right things, checked all the right boxes, and it didn’t feel good.

It felt miserable. I was really unhappy.” ~ Alexandria Crow

Alexandria is on Instagram; follow her here. And be sure to learn more about her yoga offerings.

~

Big news…even bigger than our new youtube channel. 

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