Being in a Yoga Class Doesn’t Mean You’re Practicing Yoga
06 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
I have a tremendous love and respect for the practice of yoga. So much so that I not only practice yoga but I also teach it. I have experienced how it can have a profound effect on the body, mind, and spirit. Perhaps because the transformations I most value are the ones that happen on the internal level, I find myself increasingly tired of the privileging of slim physiques, limber bodies and youthful faces in the popular representations of yoga. To me whether someone is a yogi has little to do with how accomplished their physical practice may be and much more with whether they can be present on the mat and move into stillness. Fighting their way through a class and forcing their bodies into postures is something many people do but that, in my opinion, is not yoga.
Teaching us to be present, to be still, to maintain a dynamic kind of peace regardless of internal or external disturbances is, I believe, the purpose of the challenges of a physical yoga practice. In that sense, any fitness class can be turned into a personal yoga practice if you enter that class with a yogic attitude. Similarly any yoga class is little more than a series of balancing and conditioning exercises if you are primarily motivated by your ego. We are embodied beings and there is nothing wrong with wanting to focus on achieving physical goals as long as we’re honest about it. While the purpose of a fitness regimen is the achievement of specific physical goals, the physical benefits of yoga are a by-product, rather than the ultimate goal, of the practice.
