Yoga Husbandry Entry #1

What is a yoga husband?

It’s a dude, who’s partner is a yogi and who has learned or changed because of it.

You know that movie Old School where Will Ferrel grows up to be super lame and nobody likes the new him? Frank the Tank is gone right?  It’s kind of like that, but instead of it sucking and becoming more lame, it’s awesome and I’ve had even more fun.  The booze slows down and the parties change, but the “high” from it all is epically more fantastic.

This doesn’t mean everyone who’s partner is a yogi has the same experience, but it is my experience and when I think about it, it baffles me.  Every damn day, it baffles me!  I think of the language I used when I was 20, the people I hung out with and the situations I put myself into.  I compare that to now…..whoa…shit is different nowadays.

I still see a lot of the same people, it wasn’t like a rehab cut out all your friends type deal, I am still close with most of them.  I just relate differently.  It’s awesome.

Perhaps part of this change is just growing up, but the things I have seen and been a part of in the yoga world blow my  mind.  Not necessarily that it’s amazing or incredible, it’s just the fact that I was there, that Ben was sitting in a palapa in the jungle chanting….wtf?  If you had asked me to chant when I was even 25, I would have told you to go pound sand.  I would have fought you on it, I did fight it for a long time.  THAT’s the yoga husband Schtick.  The growing changes I have witnessed in my life are positive and make me feel more amazing.  That stereotypical idea of a man changing from his wife, becoming emasculated and worn down…..the stereotype is there, but the change is completely opposite.

Instead of Frank the Tank turning into a suburban consumeristic house male, I turned into a stronger, healthier, happier version of the same fucking guy.  I still do dumb shit, I still put myself in harms way , I still surf waves too big for me, I still swear, I still laugh at farts and I still drink beer.  I’m just better at all of those things, better because I am aware why I choose to do each one.  I’ll be honest, I almost always choose it because it’s fun, but at least I know that now.  I’m aware that I even have feelings.  That my thoughts don’t mean as much as I think they do.

As a yoga husband I started to learn that not eating McDonalds is better than eating it.  That having 13 beers in a night is worse for me than 4.  That different poops mean something more than just how much air freshener you need to use.  Quick side note:  I also learned how bad air fresheners are…most of them…Kaitlin’s PooPurri not only works better but doesn’t make my sperm die.

A yoga husband isn’t really anything specific, and maybe your wife didn’t make you start meditating (which is fucking awesome by the way), and start eating all organic because pesticides are poison (which in my eyes now is completely obvious…they are literal poisons put on our food to poison the things that try to eat the food before we get eat it.  How does that make sense?)  Maybe you think the fact that I have changed so much in some ways and so little in others fascinating and you may even notice some of the same things in yourself.  Maybe it had nothing to do with yoga at all, but that fact that I am married to a yogi has changed the way she has changed me… 

Next time you partner talks about “YOGIC” shit you may still think it’s lame, but if you notice that you think it’s lame and you see that maybe you thinking that it’s lame is just a preconceived notion that yoga is for someone OTHER than you, then that is a win.  That’s all this is about man, knowing that a thought you have maybe isn’t really all there is.

Think about it….  If you can think something, and you can also notice that you are thinking that thing, then aren’t you kind of double thinking?  If your double thinking, isn’t it possible that maybe one of the thoughts your having isn’t something you need?  Or even a good thought at all?  All I’m saying is that my heart doesn’t double beat, it just fucking beats, but my brain can have two very opposite thoughts at the exact same time.  This has made me very aware that I get to decide which thoughts serve me and which thoughts I will choose to live by.  Two opposite thoughts can’t both be the best place for my energy…sorry that’s science.  Maybe men aren’t so bad at multi-tasking?  Lol, no we totally are, that is also science.

Yoga husbandry is kind of an art I think.  Now that I’m so good at it I get to write about it.  Being the expert at my life, the only expert at my life, I hope I can share some shit that will make others on this weird journey feel like it’s ok to be mad at the grateful lists, the full moon rituals, the stretching and eye gazing, but maayybbe it’s better we don’t stay that way.

-ben