On Yoga: The Bullshit I Can Believe In

I thought Eastern spirituality was bullshit. Why wouldn’t it be? Christianity was. As the only socially palatable religion present in my largely secular suburban upbringing, I experienced spiritual faith as a lot of passive symbology baked into the cultural background about a martyr who died on a torture device the devout now wore in miniature around their necks.

Ergo, we painted eggs, gave presents on either end of the year, and got dragged every now and then by neighbors and relatives to Sunday services full of smiling hypocrites singing songs and bald men delivering speeches with lots of pregnant pauses. Makes sense, right?

So one day, as a teenager, I thought, Why do I believe in this? And I discovered I didn’t. I didn’t have a substitute explanation for existence per se, and the only thing that made less sense than believing in some kind of God was believing in nothing. So okay, I decided, maybe I’m a Deist.

Yoga and meditation were things my college roommate did in his elective class, alongside people who took shots and ecstasy and went to nightclubs and raves with abandon, acting content as they chased later and later nights, harder and harder drugs, talking over the music and each other in ways I struggled to relate to, no matter how much I wanted to be cool and get the girls showing off their asses in those…