"Why are yoga girls single?"

an enlightening journey into selfawarefishness

This one piece of writing was never intended and totally incidental. It first happened as a Facebook note, written during the summer 2015. It was later edited and posted on FB at the end of the same year. As explained below, it was a reaction (would it be exagerated to call it "some insights"?) after reading a blog post suggested to me on the social network I just mentioned. Unfortunately, as for now, the article does not seem to be out there anymore. I found this one, same title, same topic, but published a year later. I can't guarantee it's actually the original one, even though it reads very familiar. Possibly edited and with minor changes to it, but I reckon its content is more or less the same. Since our facebook account isn't gonna last forever (neither is this blog nor anything else btw), I decided to migrate it here. Re-reading it, I edited and changed a few things. Even though I'm kinda more at peace with the original article, its author and what she says in it, I still stand by every single opinion I expressed below.

seen somewhere in northern Italy, in the Apuan Alps, a rare and dangerously

in-topic "Boobhist shrine", perfect for you to newagely worship the size

and shape of your freakin' hot own ego. pray, bitches!

Perfect Sunday morning: bright sun through the window, birds singing (no sycamore tree to be seen around, though), fresh brewed coffee and fresh fougasse with salted butter and homemade lemon curd. That'd be perfect already, but I also happen to have a laptop and home, lightspeed wifi to hunt some fresh stuff on our FB feed. Among many tailored suggestions, there is that particular blog article whose title is catchy enough to make me click: “Why are yoga girls single?” Promising, isn’t it? Well, spoiler alert here: after reading it with genuine curiosity, it happened to contain nothing but thin air and bitter disappointment. Somehow like the styrofoam-looking rice or corn biscuits yoga girls seem to be so freakin' keen on eating*. Hey... wanna give it a try?

Now, I am not sure whether the article quite addresses the title's question - or is indeed truncated, as some suggested (and I do hope so, because it didn't even start to deal with an otherwise interesting topic). But while it doesn't (in my humble opinion), some people in the comment section do give tremendous clues: Mindi, Beka and Katie, to start with, talk about: “(the loneliness of) being the forrunners into a new frontier", about everybody else's "relationshits" or "how difficult (it is) to find someone with such a high level of awareness as (hers)". Now if you'd excuse me to ask: well, wtf? Meanwhile, in the first paragraph of the article, the author mainly wonders how such a hot person as a yoga girl (that is: herself, indeed) could reasonably be single... Now if this is not a sexist, reductive and superficial idea of women, what is it?

How about you get over yourselves and stop being judgmental, you enlightened people? Just to begin with... I believe both Osho and Alan Watts (only to quote some mainstream - yet absolutely legit - gurus) said in different words that if you can be sitting around, proudly talking about how aware and enlighted you are, or how much wiser you are than others, then you've fallen in a trap of your own ego and you may be everything on earth but aware, wise and enlightened... The topic here is yoga, not y'ego!

Then, being in a relationship is about commitment and compromission; about giving up the Me, to -eventually- experience a We; about loving somebody more than (or as much as?) oneself. It eventually allows one to learn a good deal about oneself, in ways that self-centered people would be surprised to hear of, if they cared about other truths than their exclusive and intolerant belly-button-looking ones... In "The era of emptiness", Gilles Lipovetsky develops very interesting ideas about post-modernity: what he calls "hedonistic narcissism" and the way a cheap version of the so-called "oriental philosophy" was once re-digested by the New-Age tidal wave, only to see Westerners justify their selfishness and love of oneself in a spiritual-ish fashion... Some of the article’s ideas and some comments here sadly confirm his theories.

Even though it's a trivial detail here, the very idea that being able to bend your legs behind your head can make you hotter, as in "more attractive to a hypothetical partner" is such an immature, superficial and overall sexist cliché about attraction and sexuality in general, that I personally doubt the person who wrote this article ever considered her "partners" as other subjects, with their own genuine personalities, desires and idiosyncrasies... I also pretty much doubt the author ever was a woman. Lol. Why should a yoga pose be a priori or de facto hotter, or sexually more promising than, sitting around with a cup of coffee, sharing thoughts and connecting with another soul? It doesn't reflect anything but the author's narrow, sexist stereotypes about "self" and "non-self".

It's basically yoga understood as a spiritual extension of the immune system, basically promoting self, then identifying and getting rid of non-self. What an amazing program of awareness and personal growth!

And finally, if hanging around in flashy tight pants with a rubber mat rolled under one's arm makes one feel better about themselves, great! But if it makes one unable to love (and live with) somebody else, one should question and eventually blame one's sick egolatrous relationship to self, not just call it yoga! Seriously, this is definitely NOT yoga, this is being in love with one(pretentious)self!

Namaste, you hot, enlightened author

pd: I need to correct my very first affirmation, though: the article is short and may be truncated, but at the end of the second paragraph, everything has already been said: "before you start to wonder if perhaps all this focus on Self is turning (you) into someone selfish". See? You had the very answer from the first moment!

ppd: this note doesn’t intend to be disrespectful to anybody, nor to judge yoga, yogis or anybody linked to yoga philosophy and/or practice. First of all because I do not consider the author and commentors can in any way represent or speak for “the yoga girls’ community” - if that even exists. Then because these are only a few personal reactions to the personal opinions expressed in this particular article and its comment section... Thanks for your time!

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* Sorry for the styrofoam-looking rice or corn biscuits, they are - indeed - delicious. But it was easy and tempting, so I just did it...