Yoga and the Kool-Aid

When I first met my husband Vince he had an old, red jeep Cherokee and it proudly sported a bumper sticker that said, “question authority.”   Just the sight of it made me queasy.  It’s not that I have always been a rule follower,- I mean, a few times I have broken rules - but lately I have gotten into a pattern of walking the ‘party line’ with a blindfold on and a fuzzy warm hat covering my ears.  It’s cozy in this little place of not questioning anything or anyone.  It is definitely easier than following the advice of the bumper sticker.  As you can see, it is still haunting me.

The bumper sticker could have said, “don’t drink the Kool-Aid.”  Ohhh, the Kool-Aid. This of course is referring to the 1978 Rev. Jim Jones massacre.  Just for the record, I like Kool-Aid - especially the grape kind (for the sake of this article, let’s go with purple, not red Kool-Aid…there was an incident with me vomiting a large quantity of red Kool-Aid as a teen-ager).    Grape Kool-Aid is sweet, smooth, easy and simple.  It requires no thinking…it’s formulaic.  Follow the directions, don’t vary, add water and…magic!  Lately, I’ve been thinking about whether or not I’m drinking Kool-Aid.  Since I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve noticed that Kool-Aid drinking is everywhere.  Kool-Aid sipping or slurping is found in relationships, work, religious beliefs/spiritual practice, and yes, even our yoga asana (posture) practice.

So, let’s start with our relationships.  These could be in relationships with people at work, our partner, our boyfriend/girlfriend, professional helpers in our lives, or people in our family.   I have this habit of putting people on a pedestal, thinking they are rock stars, without flaws, better than me and/or they know me better than I know myself.  I recently said to Vince about a particular relationship, “I think I have been drinking the Kool-Aid for so long that I have convinced myself she is a different person than she actually is in my own experience.”  This is a boatload of trouble for a variety of reasons.  One of the main reasons it’s trouble for me is because once I stop drinking the “they are better than, different than they really are, or better than everyone else Kool-Aid” I am seemingly unable to metaphorically pick my relationship up off the floor, smashed underneath the rubble of my own illusions.  Once the blinders come off and I realize they are human, with flaws and warts, a personality and their own bag of trouble, I’m devastated. It’s possible I want so desperately for someone else to jump in and tell me how to live my life or I want so badly for someone to be a better human than they are, that I drink as if I have been in a desert for a very long time.  Kool-Aid drunkenness is unfair to everyone involved.

At work, the Kool-Aid discourages critical thinking because it’s easier than questioning someone in a position of power, or questioning rules or decisions that have historically been accepted.  It’s not that the Kool-Aid hasn’t tasted great in the past or that it never has value, but without questioning and thinking for ourselves, how do we navigate the screaming voice of our intuition and how do we continue to grow?  I’m not sure, but the Kool-Aid might stunt our growth.

I was recently talking with a friend about how our religious and spiritual beliefs can be so hard to question.  It’s so much easier to blindly believe in what someone in a position of power tells us to believe.  I am not saying believing is bad; I’m saying believing without questioning might ultimately turn off the voice inside our heart that has something worth hearing.  It’s scary to stop drinking. What if we listen ‘and obey’ something or someone that leaves us feeling ashamed? What if what the Kool-Aid tells us is the opposite of our experience, or the opposite of what the whispering voice of intuition is saying?  Who do we want to listen to?   The incongruity of our experience and the smooth-talking Kool-Aid is enough to make a girl sick to her stomach.


This Kool-Aid drinking also happens on the yoga mat.  I was recently talking with someone who is a dedicated yogi.  She has been practicing for about five years and through those years has had a variety of physical difficulties come up.  After she began listening more closely to her body, she realized she had been drinking some wacky Kool-Aid, forcing a style of practice that was just not right for her body.   This Kool-Aid could be unknowingly poured into our glass through the media, the yoga magazine with a Gumby-like model on the cover, through other students or teachers (hopefully not teachers at Ahh Yoga).  It’s possible we aren’t even sure when its being poured, or who’s pouring it.  Kool-Aid can make everything cloudy.

The top ten ways to know you are drinking too much Kool-Aid (not all Kool-Aid is bad, it just must be part of a balanced diet):

1. Messages from the body
2. Messages from your mood
3. You have stopped asking questions
4. You have stopped thinking critically
5. You don’t feel like yourself
6. You are making decisions that you know don’t feel right or are out of character
7. You believe everyone knows better, knows you better than you know yourself; you’ve stopped trusting yourself
8. You are forcing something and it takes a lot of effort
9. You are filled with a sense of dread
10. You are peeing purple


Although we sometimes might forget, the body is constantly giving us guidance.  This guidance may come as a fluttering feeling in our tummy, a headache, a sore back, a tight neck, or a recurring injury.  We have to really pay attention to notice some of the subtle messages that are coming through the body.  The Kool-Aid could be causing us to bite our nails, eat doughnuts for dinner, sleep too much, or lose our appetite.  This is exactly where our yoga practice can come in and give us time to reflect and tune into our life and our body.  As Mary Oliver says in her beautiful poem,“What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?”  I don’t know the answer to this and I don’t believe you have the answer for me; however, I do know I’m going to cut back on my purple Kool-Aid habit.

By the way, if you are experiencing number ten, you should definitely seek medical attention.

Also, in an effort to avoid being sued by Kool-Aid, please know I’m using this metaphorically and am in not in any way saying Kool-Aid is bad for you. Wink, wink.

Swimming Upstream

I was lying on my back during the visualization exercise.  The teacher we brought in from Detroit had the "yoga teacher" voice; you know, the calm, quiet, melodious voice.  I had just eaten a yummy lunch at Little Saigon and I was mildly distracted by the Thom Kha soup that was hanging around AND my feet were cold.  My feet being cold resulted in me coveting my friend’s toe socks.  Eating before practice and coveting your neighbor are discouraged in yoga world.  However, I had been hungry and my feet were cold!

So, I returned to listening to the melodious voice of the teacher and I heard her say something about imagining the body floating on a calm river.  I immediately discuss (that is, had a discussion between the voices in my head) how ridiculous this is and how I don't want to float in a river and how this is so NOT relaxing and then I jumped into how airy fairy all of this can become and BOOM!  Suddenly, I have the thought "you are spending your life swimming upstream."  Out of nowhere, I have a vivid (too vivid) mental picture of me in a one-piece swimsuit (not looking so hot), rather frazzled, out of breath, struggling and exhausted.  Let's just say it is a good thing I was lying down.  It's just that kind of vision that will knock a girl off her feet.

After this momentary recognition, I settled into my body and relaxed – I didn’t unravel - just let loose a bit.  Without recognizing it, I stopped swimming up stream and began floating on the proverbial river.

This teacher, Nancy McCochan, said during the weekend workshop that our yoga practice is an opportunity to recognize our habits on and off our yoga mat.  The visualization practice not only gave my body time to digest my lunch, but it gave me the opportunity to reflect on how often I swim upstream.  In my life this looks like trying too hard to fit in, caring too much about the opinion of other people (one of my mentors says what people think of me is none of my business), and resisting the reality of each moment - all a recipe for a frazzled-swimming-upstream-kind-of-life.

Asana practice (the practice of physical yoga postures; pronounced like ahh-suh-nuh) was originally developed to help prepare the body to sit in meditation.  It stretches and strengthens and helps cultivate a focused mind.  For most of us, it does more.  On that particular Saturday, it opened the door for me to recognize how I often functioned in the world; and, in my case, recognizing I was  swimming upstream.

Here's to floating downstream in 2013!