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Wednesday, September 20, 2017 // The Statement 

Empath in the wild: struggling to justify my path to peace
A

s someone who’s dealt with and continues 
to deal with disordered eating, most 
mainstream forms of exercise have come 
to be at odds with my mental and physical 

health. All the numbers and measurements of 
gym equipment, and fluorescent-lit rooms with 
mirrored walls are like an obstacle course for my self-
confidence. Most of the time, quantifying anything in 
relation to my body — whether it’s weight, mileage on 
a run, or intensity level on an elliptical — facilitates 
harmful thought patterns that have taken me years of 
introspective work to break. 

My yoga practice began when I realized I could 

not keep running outside and going to the gym while 
maintaining my physical and mental health. I used 
to be big into running, but paired with an eating 
disorder, I damaged my bone density. Now, high-
impact exercise leads to stress fractures in my legs 
and feet. And gyms are hazardous to my peace of 
mind. After years of struggling with all these factors, 
by 2015, during the spring of my freshman year, I 
stopped working out because I felt I had no good 
options.

A few months later, I felt incredibly lethargic in my 

body and needed a solution.

That’s when a friend showed me “Yoga with 

Adriene,” a YouTube channel that changed my life. 
Adriene’s videos walked me through the intricacies 
of basic yoga poses, and soon, I was able to follow 
along with her flow videos, all in the comfort of my 
own home. I did this all summer and into the fall of 
my sophomore year.

Adriene’s videos were slow-paced and heavily 

focused on self-acceptance and personal well-being. 
She emphasizes adjusting poses according to one’s 
own physical needs, not pushing yourself too hard 
and remembering it’s a practice. You’ll get where you 
want to be eventually. Adriene calls most poses by 
their sanskrit names, and she mentions elements of 
Hinduism in her videos — something about the third 
eye I don’t quite understand, but about which I’ve 
been curious to learn more. She says “Namaste” at the 
end of every video, but I never said it along with her 
— again, I don’t really know what that word means 
outside of being a general greeting and a way to wish 
someone well. I know that much, but I don’t know 
why people say it when they’re finished doing yoga, 
specifically. Although I knew my yoga practice might 
be a form of cultural appropriation, I didn’t feel I was 
doing much harm because I did her videos alone in 
my house. It felt like I was the only person involved.

But after a while I found myself wanting more than 

Adriene’s videos could offer me. I was pretty sure I 

was doing the poses correctly, but I wanted someone 
who knew more than me to tell me for sure. I decided 
to explore some free trial classes at different studios 
in Ann Arbor and encountered a whole new level of 
appropriation, a whole new kind of Americanized 
yoga compared to what Adriene taught.

Now, I’m very aware of my identity as a white 

affluent American suburban girl who now pays 
money to do Americanized yoga about three times per 
week. I know very little about the origins of yoga in 
the ancient Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism 
and Jainism, so I feel uneasy about the ways I may 
be appropriating a culture that isn’t mine — patching 
together pieces of it to benefit myself. But the stakes 
are high for me when it comes to physical exercise. 
Because of the way society has taught me to view 
my body, and because conventional forms of exercise 
have become hazardous to my health, I’ve turned to a 
practice I struggle with internally.

At the yoga studios I went to in Ann Arbor, I found a 

community of people with whom I shared some basic 
understandings about physical, mental, and spiritual 
well-being. Most people I met seemed to value 
meditation, a relatively slow-paced approach to life, 
and a generally healthy lifestyle. However, the classes 
were too fast-paced for me and too many things we 
did were quantified by the instructors. I didn’t have 
time in class to really feel my way into poses, and I 
hated counting breaths and straight up doing sit-ups 
in class. I did yoga to get away from the gym, but in 
some ways, I felt the yoga studios around here were 
the same thing — just with oil diffusers and better 
lighting.

To maintain my practice in a way that feels good 

for me — that is slower and incorporates less counting 
— I supplement my time in the studio with yoga I 
do on my own, in my apartment. And even though 
I get frustrated with my studio, when compared to 
running or going to the gym, going to class provides 
for me a respite from measurements and frees me 
from assessing my self-worth accordingly.

And it’s not just about the eating disorder and body 

image stuff. Like a lot of students here, I’m really busy 
with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, my social 
life, and keeping in touch with my family back home. 
When everyday obligations build tension in me, I can 
smooth it out with yoga. Instead of running or going 
to the gym, where my anxieties are just replicated 
in the act of measuring my body and ramping up my 
heart rate, doing yoga is my foundation of inner peace.

I see the people, a lot of whom are students, in my 

yoga classes and I wonder if they feel the same. As 
students at the University, they likely have a lot of 
school work, maybe have a job, and are involved in 
at least one student org of some kind. Like so many 
undergrads on campus, they likely feel immense 
pressure to be “successful” in all of these endeavors. 
 

Maybe yoga, for them, too, is a way to find release, 
and I hope that they, too, feel just as uneasy about this 
Americanized version of what’s, for many people, a 
deeply religious, spiritual practice.

When I see people say “Namaste” at the end of class, 

bowing their heads “to the light that is in each of us,” 
I don’t know what any of them are thinking. I know 
that together all of us in the studio have just worked 
really hard to relax our bodies and ease our minds. 
The expressions on the faces that surround me show 
a kind of making peace with what has passed before 
class, and a kind of making peace with what’s to lie 
ahead, outside the safe walls of the studio.

Still, I don’t say “Namaste” at the end of class. It 

doesn’t feel quite right. And I don’t wear shirts that 
say things like “spiritual gangster,” a phrase that’s 
problematic on multiple levels. Can I say my yoga 
practice is justified because of the personal stakes 
at hand? I don’t know. I also, unfortunately, don’t 
personally know a lot of people who practice yoga as a 
religious practice to know how my own practice may 
be affecting others negatively. While I’m in college 
with so many things going on, I don’t know how 
I’ll find a form of exercise that balances my mental 
health, physical health, and my personal standards of 
social responsibility. I guess for now my best option 
is to remain thoughtful about my habits, to keep 
questioning them, and to keep looking for better 
solutions.

BY REGAN DETWILER, COLUMNIST

statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | SEPTEMBER 20, 2017

ILLUSTRATION BY REGAN DETWILER