More than One Way to Use a Yoga Mat

Here is a story of a friend. Perhaps you have a similar friend. Who is simply the opposite of calm. She is anxious, a worry-wart, has a bad temper. Much as you know yoga would help her, you also know she’s not going to do it. She’s just not the type. She’s told you so repeatedly.

And so you worry.

By this point in your life, you have gone through the phase of giving your friend your dog-eared Iyengar texts. (“What does he know about suffering? He thinks he knows it all, eh?”)

You’ve stopped suggesting she just sit still and breathe a bit. (“It just makes me hyperventilate!”)

You see the yoga mat you bought her for Christmas curled up in a corner every time you visit, bright green as the day it was born.

By now you’ve learned, good little yogi that you are, that it’s best to be calm and listen as your friend rhymes off the dramas she’s facing – conspiracy theories about who hates her at work, her partner’s inability to correctly load the dishwasher, the impending doom of an upcoming visit with a sister. You sit and listen, you breathe, you laugh at her jokes and her strange, brash kindness, but you worry all the same.

After all, she has high blood pressure, some kind of stress rash, is it only a matter of time before things get worse? Maybe it’s time to start bothering her again. After all, if something happened to this friend, not only would you miss them terribly, you would feel somehow responsible as the one who was that much closer to enlightenment!

And then one day she calls.

Equal parts embarrassed and proud, she informs you, “Well, I bought a meditation tape. You know, a relaxation thingy for my ipod.”

“You did?” you squeal. You have won! She listened to you! “What kind of relaxation thingy exactly?”

“One of those, ‘picture yourself on a beach, sinking into the sand,’ kind of things. I gotta tell you, I really like it! I’m finally using that yoga mat! I lie there for twenty whole minutes and chill!”

For a moment, you’re indignant. She didn’t listen to you at all! That isn’t yoga, it’s escapism! That won’t help, it’s not what the mat was for!

And then you picture this friend actually lying on her green yoga mat, imagining for twenty whole minutes that she is on the beach, ignoring the demands of her job, her irritations with her family, all of it, actually chilling!

Thank god she didn’t listen to you!

She finally listened to herself. Just like what happened to you way back when, she heard the chatter of her mind, the butterflies in her belly, the tension in her back, and finally realized they were far too loud, something had to be done. Something that actually helped her. She found her own way.

And this, of course, is yoga.

So what’s the moral of this story exactly? Use your yoga mat as a beach towel? Well, yes! If that’s what floats your boat. Or connects you to the earth. Or whatever it is that your own particular bodymind is crying out for in the moment. No matter what your well-meaning friends may say!