Everything Matters

The way yoga was portrayed on Survivor last night is still on my mind.

I think it’s because millions of people watch Survivor (including me) and Shambo’s dissing of yoga was so scorn-filled yet so readily embraced by all the people she complained to about it, that it totally shocked me.

I imagined millions of viewers out in TV Land agreeing with her, going, “Yeah.  Can you imagine that?  Being on Survivor and sitting around doing yoga??  You gotta be kidding me!”

And here I am thinking everyone surely gets what yoga is by now!  But apparently not.

Apparently there are still people out there who think yoga is doing weird body postures involving placing the feet in places where feet don’t belong (like on the back of the neck or the top of the head).

Apparently there are still the people out there who think yoga is non-productive navel-gazing done by spandex-wearing  “90210-ers” who should be working  more on getting their shit together than their heads to their knees.

But in the game of Survivor everything matters.  The contestant  who chokes down the most bugs, hunts, gathers, make shelters, makes fire, and ALSO deals with the sociological side of it, wins

The whole concept of Survivor is heavily skewed towards the bug-eating side.  But the bug-eating game (i.e. the physical survival part) is, in many ways, the easiest part.

The contestant who usually wins the whole game is the one who manages to keep all the plates spinning until the end: the bug-eating game, the anger-management game, as well as the personal integrity game.

And this takes an extraordinary integration of the whole human experience, inside and out. This takes a constant and consistent mindfulness that everything matters.  This takes yoga.

My feeling is that Shambo will not win because although she may have the bug-eating down, she doesn’t have the yoga: the integration, the self-reflective awareness that comes from pausing from time to time in the midst of the “doing” to just watch the “being.”

(Now I am done with my Survivor rant.)

Thanks for listening.