The Zen of Warcraft

One of my favorite yoga teachers, Sadie Nardini, wrote a fantastic article for the Huffington Post: Om Scampi: A Top Yogi Comes Out of the Meat Eating Closet. I have a scary visceral reaction to the "top yogi" phrase (what does that even mean?), but the article is an incredibly thoughtful and well written verbalization of things I have intuited for a long time. Mostly, that nothing in the yoga sutras explicitly translates to "thou shalt not eat meat;" that interpreting ahimsa as such is a totally valid interpretation on a personal level and that vegetarianism is an important part of the culture we are kind of assimilating yoga from; but also that dogmatic righteousness stemming from an interpretation choice on an ancient text (as SN says, sound familiar?) is somewhat in violation of the nonharming principle that is in debate in the first place.
I'm sure that horrible run-on sentence is also a violation of ahimsa. Anyway, I am also an omnivore, and pretty committed to living my own truth, which at this time, includes eating meat as a way of staying open to all sorts of experiences life has to offer.

So I wanted to come out, so to speak, about something I love that doesn't quite fit into the "yoga lifestyle" prescription either. Since I started eating meat again, I've been unapologetic about it, but I am a little bit more sheepish about my love for video games. Specifically, World of Warcraft. After work, when I've practiced, exercised, socialized, cooked dinner, and prepared for the rest of my day, I'll very often log into WoW to help my friends take down a boss or two. I set things on fire. And joust. There's lots of animated violence.
I also love TV. My current rotation is True Blood and Weeds.
Let me give you a bit of history here. As an awkward middle schooler, I played flute, and wanted badly to be first chair. I never was. But I developed an ethic where I practiced all the time. Then the requisite body image issues came into play and that energy got diverted into exercise. Then studying. Art. College. Teaching yoga. Somewhere along the line I figured out that one could improve at some of the things one is supposed to be good at and have fun too. So I would feel pretty guilty for doing fun things that don't quite make you a better person.
And the story of how all that changed is an entirely different post. But now, when I'm playing WoW or watching Weeds, it's because, for the first time in 13 years I am actually kind of okay with myself. It's a way of saying that, I've done a bit of work today, and I've done my yoga, and now, I am just going to be for the next hour or two. I'm nowhere near perfect. But I'm with friends, and I am content.

See, for me, yoga is about helping you get to the truth of your inner self. And for me right now, my inner self finds some pretty great expression through WoW-playing, trashy-vampire-TV watching, beef-chomping, margarita-guzzling, cursing, and other shenanigans - and plenty of yoga. It shouldn't take anyone 23 years, or more, to be okay with just having fun. Taking up a yoga practice should be transformative, but it doesn't need to be an austere commitment to be the perfect embodiment of some completely disenfranchising stereotype. Leave the caricatures to street artists, drop the front, and just live your yoga.