PHOGI

Like Justice Stewart, we know phoga when we see it, right? It’s a wannabe kind of yoga - it desperately wants to be yoga - but it’s a fake yoga - a phony yoga.

So it hashtags itself yoga, it dresses up in outfits it thinks yoga wears, it hangs out in spaces it imagines yoga lives, and it dances around like it believes yoga moves. Phoga talks a yoga-like talk and walks a yoga-like walk - but with a shallowness that makes it feel really small - painted and plastic - like a doll.

Phoga never really gets what yoga really is and does - because of its superficial self-promotion that’s so blind it can’t even recognize its own insecurity.

Now i can be as phony as anyone - i can get all tangled up and tricked out in my tiny little self - shamelessly believing my self-important bullshit. I’m human - we’re all human - it’s seems par for this course we’re all on together.

But this playing small points to the purpose of yoga’s existence - to cut through our delusion of self-separateness into the unbounded interconnectedness that we all are. Phoga will never cut it. Only yoga will.

So let’s help ourselves and each other relax and rest in greater space - keeping an honest and loving eye on how we are relating - feeling into how any sense of separateness drives our actions - our words - our judgments. Let’s consider often whether we are living as phogis or yogis.