Forget About Yoga: It’s Not Gonna Bring Her Back

Forget about yoga. Why? Because it’s not going to bring her back. I’m so, so sorry. She left you because she wanted to, because she had to, because you’d grown apart, or because you weren’t providing her with what she needed. She left because she, the protagonist in her own story, had shit to do. She didn’t leave you. She moved forward for her. A lot of people swear by yoga, and while we never want to criticize folks for engaging in activities that bring them peace and wellness, we’re here to debunk some of the popular myths surrounding yoga as they pertain to you and your ex-girlfriend (who hasn’t forgotten about you but who will likely never need you again).

Yoga Helps to Clear the Mind

A lot of people respond to the light meditative aspects of yoga. They appreciate having a time and space where they’re not thinking about work, politics, or social media, instead just focusing on their body and breathing. Yoga frees the mind by ridding it of external concerns, so their reasoning goes.

DO NOT DO THIS.

If you need a break from work or whatever, build a table. Do puzzles. Learn a new language. Do something that requires time and energy, because you need to hijack your mind. You need to give your brain a task that is so consuming that there’s no room for anything else. Do something that requires your full attention. Yoga opens the brain, and if you leave your brain open, thoughts of her will find their way in, and you should not be left alone with those thoughts. Trust me, you do not want a clear mind right now. You don’t want any room in your brain for her smile or her smell. Block it out. Block it all out.

Thinking about her and only her on a sweaty, rubbery yoga mat isn’t going to bring her back, even if that’s one of the mats that you bought together back when you thought taking yoga together would bring you closer. Back when you naively thought yoga was just another one of the things that “just might salvage this.”

Yoga Strengthens the Core

One of my favorite stretches is ardha kapotasana, or half-pigeon pose. Like most guys just getting into yoga, I’m strong on top but very inflexible and not great when it comes to balance. A lot of yoga is definitely embarrassing, but this pose manages to be challenging without making me look like a complete idiot because it doesn’t rely on balance or flexibility. It works the hips (another challenge spot for most men) and really helps the lower back.

STRENGTHENING THE CORE DOESN’T MATTER.

It’s great for a guy like me, but it will do absolutely nothing on the subject of bringing her back. Strengthen your core for you. Open up your hip flexors for you. Lengthen. For. You. But don’t do it because you think it’ll bring her back. She didn’t leave because of your core or your hip flexors. The more you stretch for her, the more you’ll grow to resent her for not responding to it, even if she never asked you to do that in the first place.

Even if we both know that’s not why she left.

Yoga Improves Flexibility

Too little, too late, my friend. Sure, yoga will help you bend easier, but unless there’s a new stretch that improves communication in the past, there’s nothing that yoga can do for you to help bring her back.

Again, if you want to do yoga because it’s important to you to be more flexible, then by all means, please do it, because yoga can be great for that. But if you’re only practicing yoga so you can learn how to comfortably do a split in front of your ex-girlfriend (who, I’m so sorry, is seeing someone else now), then you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.

The guy she’s seeing now is a physical therapist. He drinks soda, he mostly doesn’t like the movies she likes, and he’s never done yoga. But he listens to her.

Do you understand now?

Do you understand that yoga was never the problem?

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