Yoga

I had a strange conversation with my boss about a month ago that made more sense today.

It was just the two of us in his office, and somehow the conversation turned to Yoga. I really don't remember how, and it doesn't matter. He mentioned he had started doing it at home. Fine. He had some DVDs he was using to learn it. Okay. You feel like you're standing or sitting there doing nothing, breathing deeply, and you end up way sore the next day; it's a great workout. Sounds interesting.

Then it gets weird. He starts saying something and then pauses for a second and says, "I know you're Mormon, and I really don't want you to take this the wrong way, but what I really like about Yoga is how it's all about the individual. It's about what you do to benefit yourself personally. You can introspect and modify things however best suits your needs."

Okay, so what does that have to do with being Mormon? I could kind of guess where he was going with it, that he obviously has some issue where he thinks the LDS Church is too controlling or something. It was just hard to say. Last I remember we teach about the importance of agency, self-reliance, and similar doctrines, but I understand the confusion caused by being cautioned against detrimental behaviors which often serve to remove agency.

So turn off the wayback machine, and we're at a conference that has some early morning Yoga for attendees. Not having ever done Yoga before, I'm interested and go. I knew he was interested, having told me previously he likes it, so I tell him he should come tomorrow. Then the connection is made. He says that he's not into organized religion or organized exercise.

So he apparently has this little schpiel he gives, and apparently the first time he only gave me the half about not liking organized exercise, forgetting to mention organized religion other than to ensure me he wasn't trying to demean my choice in subscribing to organized religion.

It makes me wonder if I sometimes tell a story so many times it becomes old and memorized to the point where I go on auto-pilot and don't pay attention to whether I told all the important parts. Maybe it's kind of like when you copy and paste a sentence, and it doesn't quite fit in its new location. So you delete a word or two and fix the capitalization and punctuation to make it fit without realizing that it still doesn't make sense.

I'm not totally sure how he knows I'm LDS, since we've never talked about it, although I have some guesses. I don't take offense to his choice to reject organized religion. I'm assuming his contempt is general to all organized religions. While I understand it better now, so it's less strange, it's still a bit off that two discussions on exercise have brought in at least a mention of religion. Granted, Yoga has religious roots, but the way it's practiced here in the states is pretty nonreligious in nature.