Via the lovely, feisty Holly Westergren and our friends over at Sir Richard’s:

Okay boys, gentlemen, not-so-gentle men, knights in shining armor, pimps and playas…

You’ve see us in the gym, in yoga studios, in magazines or on TV. Maybe you’ve even taken our classes—we yoginis, the flexible dare-devils on a spiritual mission who seem to float around the world so freely. We’re a different breed. Most of us are born travelers, nomads even. Most of us don’t like societal rules and conventions. And most of us don’t adhere to them and have dedicated our lives to living outside boxes in some way or another.

This is a beautiful thing that many men find intoxicating and exhilarating— until they realize that it also scares the shit out of them. This is true especially for the kind who look good in ties.

For the multi-talented beautiful Yoga Goddess, finding a life partner who is traveling down the same road or wants to walk hand-in-hand with a Yoga Goddess on her journey is much more difficult for her than any forearm balance. Yoga Goddess, more specifically, a woman from a Western civilization who teaches yoga for a living, especially in a metropolis of some kind, is a complicated creature who has elected to remove her Western goggles and instead apply and be guided by Eastern philosophies and practices of self-actualization.

This makes her an intriguing and complicated creature to most men, but I assure you, she is not entirely inscrutable. You have only to understand that underneath her yogi persona, your Yoga Goddess was probably fed fairy tales for most of her life, where damsels in distress waited to be rescued by the Prince. Now she is grown up and she is a Yoga Goddess, a yogi who has discovered her dharma ( this is the Sanskrit word for one’s “virtuous path”) and a devotion to God which has eased her existential distress but probably not completely relieved her of the distress of the romantic variety.

A Yoga Goddess can appear to many like an untouchable, statuesque, ephemeral, mystical, zany, Aphrodite-esque theatrical mess on wheels. To many men, she is bewitching and beguiling, she can unsettle you with her eyes and bring you to tears when you least expect it. A Yoga Goddess can see souls. She knows how to make you feel things you may not want to feel, which leaves many men feeling too vulnerable in her presence to ever feel good enough. Know that the Yoga Goddess of your dreams is not out to emasculate you but that it is her wish and it is within her power simply to help you open your heart. Sometimes, a Yoga Goddess forgets her own power and forgets too that a man might not want the woman he is pursing to have that effect on him. Know that she knows this but can’t always help it. Her soul work goes deep. The tricky part is, as a highly sensitive healer and woman with deep compassion for human suffering, she no doubt has walls of her own that you will have to be willing to tear down for her to feel safe enough to let you in. Therein lies her beautiful complexity.

So, here are some essential things you should know before you set out to win the heart of a Yoga Goddess of your dreams:

1) Get over the fact that a Yoga Goddess is probably someone who is a little bit dangerous to take home to meet your mother.

It occurred to me recently that this picture alone might actually have been why my last relationship didn’t work. If you want your Yoga Goddess for your very own, you must grow up and get over needing your mother’s approval. Yoginis are sparkling, creative, charming, intelligent, beautiful, sexy, highly intuitive and charismatic women who your mother might not love at first and will come to love eventually. But we’re also wild and free-spirited, with a lotta bit of hippie hell-raiser on the inside, which has the potential to feel threatening to many mothers who just want their son to settle down with a nice girl who won’t make too many waves. The good thing is that these qualities are usually countered with equal parts compassion, faith, and altruism. Yoginis also have chameleon qualities, so it is possible that your Yoga Goddess might be willing to dim her light for a meeting with the parents, but do not be surprised if your beloved Mumsy gives her the snake eye for reasons you cannot and will not ever understand. It’s a witchy woman thing.

2) Yoga Goddesses don’t do small talk.

Yoga goddesses usually cut the shit and get to the stuff that matters. Questions like, “What do you feel? Where do you feel it? What do you believe? Have you surrendered?” are a Yogi Goddess’s version of small talk. A woman who has chosen a spiritual path and dedicates her life’s work to helping people unify their mind, body, and spirit in profound and transformative ways is just not very good at shooting the shit with strangers and will tend to fire away questions that get right to the heart of the matter. If you need her to tone down the yoga talk, simply brief her before dinner with your boss. You can take her to work functions and she will do just fine for a while, but you might hear her take very deep loud audible breaths throughout the course of the night to manage her sensitivity to the noise and heavy lifting of bullshitting. Keep in mind, in her line of work, she meets people for the first time on the floor in sweatpants, and spends her days reading about God and breathing. So, don’t be surprised if she might need to go and do a headstand in the corner after a few vodka tonics to handle the change of scenery and relax her face from all the fake smiling.

3) Yoga Goddesses consistently crave and create adventure for themselves and others.

Yogis by nature are adventurous so if you’re not willing to be adventurous, in all kinds of ways, if you need to play it safe because you’re afraid of what people will think, then the Yoga Goddess is not for you and she probably won’t date you anyway. For the Yoga Goddess, it is not enough to simply like the idea of adventure. She will test your strength, she will keep you on your toes, she will love it if you surprise her just as much as she surprises you. If you’re a stable, steady kind of man, she will love you for your groundedness but ask you to abandon it on occasion in the name of faith, courage, and wisdom. That’s just how it goes. One of the most romantic things you can do for a Yoga Goddess is to plan a trip for the two of you and surprise her with it. She is used to taking the lead with plans and orchestrating events. To be cared for in this way is a Yogi Goddesses’s dream. And yes, the adventure extends to the bedroom, naturally. Don’t be scared. Yoga Goddesses are very gifted and patient teachers and healers.

4) A Yoga Goddess will turn your world upside down.

If you fall for a Yoga Goddess, it is very likely that she will very gracefully turn your buttoned-up world upside down. Afterall, she has been called to teach people to see things from another perspective, to look at things differently, to encourage people to challenge their ideas about who they are and what their lives should look like. This is probably why many men will date Yoga Goddesses for a time but never marry them. The potential for change is too great for many men who are intrigued by the possibility of being with someone so free-spirited but who are ultimately uncomfortable with what life might look like with someone who is so comfortable with uncertainly, so in tune with and guided by spirit. Someone who possesses an ardent faith in things unseen can feel too intense for someone who is not prepared or interested in a spiritual journey. So, while your Yoga Goddess can be playful and fun-loving, she takes her life, her vocation and her spiritual path very seriously. A man who earns a Yoga Goddess’s love must respect and admire her work, understand its value to humanity.

5) Yoga Goddesses are mysterious.

Yoga Goddesses do not go out of their way to be mysterious, they just are, simply because they have surrendered to the mysteries of life, have given up searching for answers for why things are and very comfortable living the the gray areas of life. If you are a rigid thinker, the Yoga Goddess is not for you. She is a free-thinker, open-minded and open-hearted. She prizes authenticity over knowledge and accomplishment and leans into the mystery of life at every turn. In my experience, this terrifies and confuses many men. Yoga Goddesses are not good planners since they are usually out doing God’s work, will entertain detours if led by spirit to go left instead of right or to be late for an appointment because of a chance encounter with a mystical stranger who seems to have an important message for her. She will require your trust and patience and she will return the favor tenfold. If she keeps you waiting, chances are she will have a magical reason for it, a wonderful story that keeps your faith in things unseen alive. She’ll tell you about it while giving you some kind of exotic massage. She cannot be rushed. And she will not let anyone else set her pace for her.

6) A Yoga Goddess is the hostess with the mostest.

She will cook you things to balance your doshas and if you don’t know what those are, she will help you identify them. She will play amazing music from all over the world that will transport you into other galaxies. She will know what to do with your body in many situations as well as what kind of oils to rub on it and where to make you feel like the God you are. She will create a house of harmony, health, balance. She will want to care for your mind, body, and spirit. She can’t help it. It’s her job.

7) A Yoga Goddess is still a material girl.

A Yoga Goddess is not immune to desires of the flesh. Though she has probably made the decision, at certain points in her life to disengage from the material world as part of her spiritual training, she does still enjoy earthly comforts like jewels and fancy dinners and unexpected trips to exotic locales. And she is still a girl looking for a boy to love her, honor her, and ravish her.

8 ) A Yoga Goddess cherishes her freedom and yours.

The yogic path is often called the quest for the jivan mukti, or the soul’s liberation. A woman who is on a yogic path understands that souls want what souls want and that a relationship is meant to be a place where those desires can be expressed without shame or guilt. This can make her seem like she has the potential to be so free-spirited that she just wants to be free-wheelin’, free-loadin’ and free-lovin’ her way around the world. Not so. A yogic-minded woman simply understands for herself that we are all here to be each other’s teachers and students and that there is no better place for the expression of that dynamic than in a loving partnership.

Read on for 9 and 10 over at the Sir Richard’s Salon.