My childhood was not ideal.  In fact, I felt like an alien and never quite fit in with the family I was born into.  There were no boundaries and at times, things were dicey.  Tempers flew often and tension was commonplace.  This lead to a rather cynical outlook for me and my trust in the human race was very low.

In my early teens, while everyone else was grooving with Heart and Styx, I was marching to the beat of a different rhythm.  I had fallen in love – with punk rock music.  Early punk really spoke to me – the anger, the sense of alienation, the desire to stick a finger to the “man”.  Finally, something made sense to me and seemed to resonate with my world view.

But after years of being angry, I found that I got tired of it.  I was sick of finding darkness everywhere I looked and I began to hate hating.  In other words, I started to “mellow”.  Age does that to a person.

Something else had changed in my life.  I started doing yoga.  And doing it every day.  The more I did yoga and meditated, the less I hated.  Suddenly, things that used to get to me simply stopped.  I began to feel peaceful.

And then I started inching my way into the yoga community.  Finally – a tribe that I could relate to.  Uh…not so much.  Once again, the alienation came back.  I didn’t wear the “proper yoga clothing”.  I wasn’t vegetarian.  I said the F word.  I wouldn’t join Yoga Alliance (too corporate and government for me).  Kirtan bored me to tears (I prefer Eminem).  The whole “kumbaya” thing started to smell like bullshit to me.

I dropped out and fell away from it.  And meditated on that conundrum.  I came to the stark realization that I didn’t need to be angry but I didn’t need to assume some “yoga personality” to be peaceful.  I could still listen to gangsta rap and punk, I could still eat a steak, I could still not like working for the “man”. And even a little cynicism wasn’t such a bad thing.  In other words, it was okay to simply be me as ME.

I still do my practice.  I drop in on classes on occasion.  I attend workshops when I can. But I will not compromise to fit into any “group” much as I won’t push my body into any pose that doesn’t suit it.  Yoga is about being authentic to who you are and finding peace with that.

“It’s a repressive society where you can’t be horrible, I’m not horrible, they made me horrible, I’m just honest.” ~ Johnny Rotten

Om Shanti,

Theresa

Image from coolchaser

I just imported all the old files from the old blog and got it rocked out!  Aw yeah!!!

~Maya Angelou