Judgement Yoga

I go to hot yoga at 9 AM, where we sweat out our Bay Area neuroses onto our mats, twisting our limbs into accomplishment.

Fifty of us pack into a 105-degree room, arranging our mats just far enough apart so we don’t drip sweat on each other. It’s a ritual, a place of supposed presence and focus.

But one morning, something disrupted the routine. Two boys—maybe 8 and 10 years old—were right in front of me. Wait… are kids even allowed? Some blond Marin mother had brought her kids!

I was irritated. I was judgmental.

This isn’t safe for them! What was the studio thinking? What was the mom thinking? I wanted to say something sharp, but instead, I forced myself to focus on my pose.

But my mind wouldn’t let go. The judgment loop kept running. This woman must be addicted to yoga if she couldn’t find childcare. What kind of mother does this?

Then, something unexpected happened. The boys got really into it.

I watched from the corner of my eye, waiting for them to collapse in exhaustion. But they didn’t. They held their poses, focused, steady. The instructor cheered them on. The whole class did. They smiled. They didn’t even seem to sweat as much as the adults.

Judgement Stifles our Reach

Meanwhile, I had ruined my own practice by silently judging. The mom knew what she was doing. So did the studio. And, it turns out, so did the boys. They wanted to be there.

This experience made me ask myself: how often do I waste energy judging others instead of improving myself? How often do we all?

Buddhism teaches, “When you judge another, you do not define them; you define yourself.”

And yet, so many of us spend our mental bandwidth sizing others up rather than focusing inward.

In the workplace, judgment can kill collaboration. It stifles innovation, blocks empathy, and wastes precious energy. The time spent dissecting someone else’s choices could be used to improve our own performance, creativity, and leadership.

What if we traded judgment for curiosity?

What if, instead of assuming someone else is doing it wrong, we asked, What can I learn from this?

That morning in yoga, I should have focused on my own balance, my own breath, my own growth. The boys did. And they nailed it.