Book Review: Do Your OM Thing

You guys, I’m participating in a book tour! I received an email a while ago gauging my interest in receiving a book for review – the book in question being Do Your OM Thing by Rebecca Pacheco. Usually the emails I receive are pitches to try out a new kind of toilet paper and write up my thoughts on it, or to see if my readers would be interested in a coupon code for beef jerky, in exchange for my honest review of a dried meat product. So I was kind of excited that TLC Book Tours thought I might be interested in reviewing a new yoga book. I agreed because a) I will never, ever turn down a free yoga book, b) the premise – which you can read here – about fitting off-the-mat yoga into your day-to-day life is relevant and interesting to me, and c) I loved the title. Hey, I’ve been putting the OM in OMG since 2008, so I love a good play on words.

This book is an enjoyable book that reads like a blog – and no wonder, the author is a blogger at omgirl.com. It covers everything from the Yoga Sutras to chakras to spirituality, but you don’t need to be a yogi to be interested in this book. I think that this is relevant for everyone, in that the focus isn’t on crazy postures like this:

but rather on how to live an authentically beautiful life. True, inner yoga. Because as we all know, it doesn’t matter if you can do this:

if you’re an asshole, then you are not a yogi.

I promise, no more gratuitous yoga photos. Okay, maybe one more:

As I went through the book, I marked passages that spoke to me. Here are a few of my favourites; maybe they will speak to you too.

Brahmacharya: Abstinence

The chapter on Brahmacharya deals with promiscuity in a very unique way. Most of us have a particular definition about abstinence or promiscuity, and it has to do with sexytimes. But a modern approach to this is very interesting: what if we dealt with energetic promiscuity? What if we looked at how we commit our time and energy to other people: are we present in our commitments or do we spread ourselves thin without paying much attention to any one thing? This really spoke to me, as I have a tendency to take on way more than I should. I had to practically force myself not to check off all the boxes when my older son’s school volunteer forms came home. No, Nicole, you do NOT need to say you’re available for everything. I have a tendency to say yes to unimportant things, which leaves less energy for actually important ones.

Food For Thought: “Committing ourselves to too many people and obligations in which we’re not truly invested can be a form of energetic promiscuity, which runs the risk of making us feel used up and discarded after.” – Right? Who can relate to that?

Aparigraha: Greedlessness

Sometimes it’s hard not to be greedy, but the antidote to this is gratitude for what we have. Clearing out the excess in my house from my recent Kondo-ing extravaganza has actually left me feeling grateful and immensely happy with the things I kept. Interesting note: the author discusses jealousy as being spiritual greed.

Food For Thought: “Whereas other negative emotions like fear and anger can have positive and productive applications, jealousy is a wounded, lame creature that gnaws away at the heart and contributes nothing in return. It’s corrosive and crappy for the person who feels it and has no impact on the person to whom it’s directed.” Exactly. I need to think about this next time I feel those jealousy pangs.

The Body

The chapter on our bodies and how we take care of them is beautiful; often we conflate what a person looks like with what it must feel like to be that person. The author discusses how what we embody on the inside shows in our appearance.

Food For Thought: “If you want to embody beauty, you’ll have to do things that genuinely make you feel beautiful…they frequently include smiling or laughing…The ways in which we choose to move our bodies and nourish ourselves are two of the greatest gifts we are given every day.”

Vishuddha/ Throat Chakra

We all know that words have meaning, and the wrong words can be very hurtful. We’ve all been there, we’ve all said things we didn’t mean in the heat of the moment, we’ve misspoken, we’ve communicated badly – it happens to everyone. But being conscious of your words, tone, and thoughts is so important. It’s something that I strive for; to think before I talk or type. Is what I’m going to say kind? Is it useful? Most importantly, would I want to be spoken to in that way myself?

Food For Thought: “If we say the words, we’ve created their energetic vibration in the world. Even if we’re the only ones who hear the negativity, it has an effect. The language of our words, spoken and unspoken, profoundly affects who we are and how we feel, physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

This book is full of gems, and is lovely and thought-provoking too. Not everyone is interested in the physical aspect of yoga, but the off-the-mat aspects are relevant to us all.