Can a yogi date a "non-yogi?"

Alec and I had an impactful conversation a few weeks ago questioning if we could become romantically involved with someone that was not a modern day “yogi.” My immediate answer was “yes!” but we took the time to analyze and discuss anyways because…well, we’re yogis.

The biggest personal changes I’ve seen happens in yoga teacher training. The journey is different for every single person but most of us had a moment of absolute breakdown. For me, it was why am I living in a cold climate…my heart is FROZEN, why have I fought with my family, what do I want with this career and why, dear Shiva why, do I have an impossible, magnetic attraction to bad boys and daredevils!? I left teacher training with many more questions, but the comfort that happiness is not location bound, family can be mended and awakened, careers are not you…they are just what you do, until you find one you truly love and most importantly bad boys and daredevils are simply finding yoga…off the mat (sometimes really, really high in the air).

So, can a yogi date a “non-yogi?” We all remember the revelations that occurred on our mats. The answers that were found. The strength that was built. The internal awakening that we crave to keep our wheels turning. However, weren’t there little pieces of yoga that you knew very well before that manduka emblem became your home plate? I used to yearn for the ocean so badly that I thought I might suffocate if I didn’t sit on my beach towel next to my clean slate at least once per year. And when I made it there I would always bolt down into that water so fast you would think I was on fire. I was finding yoga there. The ocean was a place to me that nothing else mattered and I could be fully present and joyful.

It happened in winter too. Once I turned to my gorgeous yogi friend, Ang, on a chair lift and noticed that we were breathing together and smiling together and I said, “Ang! We’re doing yoga right now.” She totally got it which is remarkable because the other daredevils were moving too quickly to understand that day.

I won’t deny that there is a power in savasana when you are blissing out next to someone you are starting to adore (or maybe you already dove in full force) and you can feel their hand inching towards yours. Or seeing your boyfriend of 5+ years trying something new to support you when you were fully convinced he was good at everything. Or seeing my favorite little boy smile creep across Corey’s face during Angie’s most kick ass sculpt class. It’s an amazing thing to share and if you have it, go to the moon together yogi lovers.

If you don’t have it…then respect where your crush, significant other or life partner finds their yoga. When I looked back at Dain on the top of Vail mountain and screamed out of complete “right now” excitement and all he said was, “I know!” We were doing yoga. My little, wise girl Anna says that she loves the fact that yoga is hers alone. Put Alex behind the wheel of a fast car and he’s doing yoga. It’s climbing rocks, it’s my brother scoring in a hockey game, it’s riding a wave, it’s hiking our mountains, it’s going fast, it’s what we strive to do every time we come to our mats…live.

Another false summit and that's perfect.

I have been thanked by powerful, gorgeous women that somehow resonate with my words on this blog. Some of these women have seen me so incredibly stripped down that I couldn’t even move from the foot of someone’s hospital bed. Or I sat in their living room reading aloud a break up letter and clinging to words that no longer belonged to me. Or I put on a power house face all day long and ran out of a yoga class to hug my best friend and she just knows.

All of my moments of desperation have an anxiety ridden thread in common and that is that I lost sight of my freedom. I promised myself before I even hit adolescence that I would never, ever hold on to someone so tight that their wings stopped functioning properly. So why, when I was 17 did I fear losing him to a higher power for years and years after. And why, when I was 21, did I squeeze his hand tight all the way to the Southernmost point until I was convinced that we could just marinate in the sand until we could both say forever. And why, when I’m 26, and I still learning to let go and give in at the same time.

Ahhhh it’s because we must continue to learn. When I nearly lost my first passionate, compulsive, musically inclined blue eyed boy in a crash, Mom said, “Chelsea, you can give him everything right now, but he does not owe you.” There is not a single person that we choose to love that owes us. When we learn to embrace the distance, when we learn to say run along my dear because you have amazing things to get done, when we come together and laugh over stories of our independent feats and realize there is no one else we would rather tell these stories too…that is when we really have it right.

Jealousy is the most ghastly feeling in the world and I haven’t felt it powerfully in years. Not because I stopped comparing or learned to trust completely…because I believe in my path and I believe in take it or leave it. I think 26 is a breaking point. I think 26 is about telling the truth and owning that truth and holding hands with someone that thinks that truth, although sometimes messy, is something that they’d be open to working with. It’s not about protecting your heart anymore…it’s about waiting for the right time to jump.

As Amy H would say, “crying is strength…until it’s not.” I’ll jump for that.