My Kidneys Work Just Fine, Thank You

Maybe she doesn't have kidneys...

So I’ve been getting in to yoga lately after having basically done no exercise for 3 years. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of work to do. And I like yoga, I really do. But I’m having a bit of trouble with the whole yoga “culture”.

There’s a few facets of the yoga culture (hereafter YC) that really burn my ass. The first are the extreme number of Whole Foods Moms. WFMs are the people who show up to yoga like it’s their job. They’re usually in incredible shape, so call sour grapes here if you want, but for some reason I just can’t stand these women. They all have seriously fancy yoga mat carriers. They all seem to have incredibly expensive yoga apparel, a different ensemble for every class of the week. It seems they leave their (home birthed, natch) babies with the nanny and come to yoga in their (safe for the whole family!) SUVs and aside from intermittent charity work, this is all they do. They don’t believe in vaccinating their kids and they are the main offenders in terms of YC Facet That Burns My Ass #2.

This is the whole “detox” thing. WFMs love to talk about how yoga detoxes your body. In some ways I understand this, yoga can calm the mind and body after a stressful day. But what it can’t do is literally remove toxins from your body. Do you know what “detoxes” your body? Your kidneys and liver. Mine work just fine and no amount of “pushing forward from the heart” with my hands is going to change that.

The worst part of YC, I’ve saved for last. David Rakoff discussed this idea a bit in his excellent essay “And One Called Hell”. It’s the idea that somehow doing yoga counts as a “good deed”, a mitzvah as my Mom would say. It emphatically does not. Again, WFMs are some of the worst offenders, but hippies are bad too. Yoga is good for your mind and body, it’s an excellent and usually safe work out. But it does NOT help people in Haiti. You would think this goes without saying but I have heard quite a few people explain that they’ve used their meditation time to concentrate on those suffering. This is always said in such a way that it’s clear the speaker expects some kind of validation or thanks for her sacrifice. But I can guarantee that the people in Haiti who are still missing family member and hoping and praying every second that they will be found alive don’t give a flying fuck about some white broad in a $300 outfit in Portland, OR, meditating on their behalf.

Now I’m thinking I should have written about this in my other blog.