I’m taking a vow of yoga.

No - this isn’t my two-week notice before I run off to an Indian ashram. And it’s not some new age vow of celibacy either.

It’s a commitment to me.

“Jeez,” you’re probably thinking, “This girl does yoga and reads and writes about it for fun, and she’s not committed?”

Leave it to a best friend to put your life in check.

Briana and I were having an e-conversation about how we wanted to improve our lives – not like resolutions but more like paradigm shifts, altering our perspective to create real change.

When she e-mailed me and said that she hoped I would try to round out my life by stopping my obsessing about my dating life, I was taken aback.

“It seems to bring you A LOT of unhappiness,” she wrote. “I do think you are realizing, much like you did with your weight, that you’re too good for that.”

“Uhh … that’s not what I was thinking … but maybe that should be my goal,” I told her. “I’m a little scared.”

That conversation was two months ago but has whirred in my mind nearly every day since.

At the gym last week, I stumbled on a Yoga Journal article about how finding yourself is finding your soul mate.

I thought about all the things that inspire me, all the adventures I want to embark on, stories I want to write and things I want to see. 

“How much of my energy have I misplaced?” I wondered.  “How many times have I worried about someone not worth worrying about when I could’ve been making myself happier?”

That’s when I decided to take my vow.

For the next year, I’m going to commit to going to yoga as not just a calorie-burning activity but as an exercise in learning about me.

I will go to yoga and mediation class as often as I can. In 2009, I want to start teacher training.

I’m still trying to be yogic and flexible about the whole thing:  OK, I may not make class seven days a week. It may be better for me to have a drink with the girls or a beer with a boy and skip class on occasion, but I’m vowing to decidedly put me first.

So I guess it’s ’til death do me part, right?