Yoga Girl

Recently, Scott Wilson released a song to the internet called Yoga Girl. It’s available for download on iTunes http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/scottwilson1 , or if you’d like to preview the song, it can be found at http://soundcloud.com/metapunk/yoga-girl

In Scott’s words:

The song is a tongue in cheek look at the recent popularity (considering its ancient origins) of yoga as another form of exercise, as opposed to its original intentions, as a technique on the road to enlightenment.

Yoga Girl
I hope you sit right next to me
I’ve seen you on the weekends
I’ve seen you in a magazine

I hear you’re in a movie
About men who came from Mars
You are probably from Venus
And our fate was written in the stars

Yoga Girl
You’ll never know
What you mean to me

Ancient yogis realized a long time ago that sitting in meditation for 8 hours or more can be quite painful, and developed techniques to remove blocks in the body. Many of these techniques also open channels in the body, allowing energy to flow more evenly through the body, so that when the moment came when the massive rush of energy that often accompanies the experience of enlightenment, that the body and mind of the aspirant was not crushed under the weight of their own toxins, and toxic mind states, which can manifest in the body as muscle blocks, and other forms of resistance.

I am not an expert at yoga by any means so I will not go into detail about a subject I know about only by experience and attending yoga classes, and I’m sure the comments section might contain the opinions of many who could go into greater detail on the subject with greater accuracy. But one look around a yoga studio will tell you that enlightenment is not necessarily the goal of the modern concept of yoga, especially when it makes your butt look so fabulous.

This irony is the reason I wrote the song, because the truth is I am interested in the subject of enlightenment, and yoga’s role in that process, and there is nothing so hilarious or ironic than trying to concentrate on stilling the mind and focusing the attention on the body than to be surrounded by a bevy of beautiful and incredibly fit women.

Do you feel my attention
Do you see the intent
Behind my eyes
Would you make an exception
When your only desire
Is being wise

I wonder if anyone can be so honest as to admit the obvious contradiction between seeking after something that was designed to be a solitary experience yet to be immersed in an environment that is reeking with sex. Followers of tantra would probably see no contradiction, but I cannot help to laugh internally at the irony of the situation, and it was my intention to poke fun at that confluence of the spiritual and the sensual in the song.

Yoga Girl
I’m picking up the pieces
I walked away from all the games
And someone who got close to me

I like the way you move
I like the way you sweat
I’d like to see your groove thing
Cause I’m not over her quite yet

Yoga Girl
You’ll never know
Why you’re mean to me

Yoga Girl
I’ll never know
Just how you feel

In my version of events, I pictured someone who is perhaps visiting a gym after a bad breakup, trying to get his life together, and being confronted with a beautiful woman, and everything that comes out of that internally. In less than five minutes. With four guitar solos.

We are all in some way trying to bridge the gap between our desire for whatever it is we’re seeking and the (supposed) reality of the barriers to its realization, whether real or imagined. In this case, it is confronting our lower nature in an attempt to realize higher mental states. In times past, monks would retreat into mountains and melt snow with their advanced kundalini powers, but our modern day equivalent is the wood floored box of a yoga studio, filled with distractions and temptations. In a way it has made the process of self realization much more difficult, even though the knowledge of it has filtered its way into the mainstream, at the same time as western culture is so opposed to the concept in its ideology of consumption.

As Rumi so much more eloquently stated, our desire for union can take many different forms, and chances are more than likely that our desire for connection in the human world is driving our need for it in the spiritual world. It is equally as difficult to bridge the gap of our personal perception of the world around us and how to communicate it to others, than it is to make that final step into the unknown, and equally risky.

Are you feeling abandoned
Are you really alone
When you close your eyes
It’s hard to make a connection
Behind a pretty disguise

Yoga Girl
You’ll never know
What you need from me

Yoga Girl
I’ll never know
Just what you feel

Until we bridge that gap, we write our songs, and our blogs, and our cards and letters, and buy our cars, and our special yoga gear in hopes that we can connect to what is right there in front of us, in fact it is so close that it is us. And it is my hope that we don’t submit to the many distractions from that purpose, as tempting as they may be. So I wrote a song about it.