“Men don’t look at me anymore.” A client once told me about fifteen minutes into a coaching session. I asked her why she felt this mattered. In reply she told me she believed because she was getting older that men no longer found her as physically attractive. This, of course, was not the truth. The problem was she had allowed her mind to tell her that because she was aging she was no longer as worthy of finding love. There are millions of men and women out there who believe similarly. Thus, the Hot Chick/Player Syndrome has emerged and taken hold in American society.
Here in America we have some very obvious, but skewed, standards of what makes a person desirable. For a woman it is all about how physically attractive she is and how much she flaunts her sexual desirability to the opposite sex. For a man it is all about how many notches he has on his belt, how many women are at his beck and call, and how many of them he has slept with. No matter where you go women are living the Hot Chick Syndrome, believing that if they are not physically attractive and sexy enough they won’t find true love. Men are given this player image, or Player Syndrome, and told it is the epitome of manliness. It’s no wonder that society believes the myth to be truth. Men are taught the standards are “How much fun can I have? How much can I score and how best can I go about it?” The Player Syndrome holds to the belief that there is no permanent love. The Hot Chick and Player Syndrome are the male and female equivalents of the same thing. Both the Hot Chick and Player Syndromes are all about mastering the outer game. But the truth is you can never master the outer game without the inside as well.
This is what I believe to be the state of love here in America. The myth is presented everywhere from pop music, film, advertisements, and even books. So what has brought about this myth of how to achieve true love? There is little to no reference point for love. Many grow up in homes where loving relationships were not modeled for them for various reasons. If a person has not had that model of what a healthy and loving relationship looks like then they have no real reference point to go by. Another reason why this myth has become the state of love in America is we have an enormous amount of freedom in this country. While our freedom is a wonderful blessing, it is frequently abused, especially when it comes to love. Freedom in love without responsibility is much like giving a toddler an open can of red paint and leaving them alone in a room full of white walls. Before you can blink much of that red paint will be all over the room! It is the same way when it comes to abusing our freedom when it comes to love. This is why having a model for healthy and loving relationships is so important. Otherwise we are just going from one myth to another, getting no closer to true love than we were before.
How can we apply Yoga wisdom in these situations? First we must ask ourselves a series of questions.
- What is love?
- What is marriage?
- Why is marriage important to me?
Yoga has very clear answers to these questions. Yoga teaches you to work on the inside and everything you need is already inside you. All you have to do is just got to take off the layers and remove the veil. The way you achieve this is through yoga techniques.
Yoga Wisdom:
- The Hot Chick/Player Syndrome is the male and female equivalents of the same thing.
- Both are about mastering the outside. But you cannot master the outside without first mastering the inside.
- We need to find role models that can show us what a healthy and loving relationship looks like.
- We need to create a balance between freedom and responsibility.
- We need to be able to answer 3 key questions about love and why we are seeking a relationship.
- We need to use Yoga techniques to remove the layers on the inside so that we can have clear answers to these 3 questions if we do not have them yet.
"It is about learning to love from the inside out. Yes a big part of the book is about Yoga, but the core message of it , is learning to and how to love yourself on the inside. It emphasizes so much on focusing on yourself, that is such a refreshing perspective on relationships.” Paulina D, San Diego, CA
"The core message of the book is before you unite with someone try to unite with yourself. It is learning about yourself, finding yourself and then if you choose to you can find love on the outside . The book gives ways to do just that in simple step by step way.” 
"Yoga is a life long process and the goal of life is self exploration. The book inspires me to make myself whole, integrated, to feel complete unto myself. Once I do that , I will attract a holistic, integrated person who is a totality of himself, which is how a relationship is supposed to be.” 
"Yoga is love, love is Yoga. It is not a relationship book, it is not just a love book, it is a lifestyle book. It is educational, informative, a message that everybody can apply. It teaches you how to be a better person, so that you don’t just find the love of your life but learn to have better relationships with everyone.” 