Many Forms of Practice

If you practice yoga poses, does that mean you have a yoga practice? If you’re not able to do a yoga pose, does that mean you’re not a yogi? Our culture has commoditized yoga as a form of exercise. Click on any drop-down menu of exercise options and yoga will pop up along with kickboxing, Pilates, and personal training. When we see images of people doing a wildly expressed yoga pose, often perched on the edge of a cliff at sunset, we think “Wow…they must be good at yoga!” I’ve had people tell me that their friend/niece/cousin is “good” at doing yoga to which I lift my eyebrows and wonder, “What do they actually mean?”

We are impressed with people’s ability to perform postures and make the assumption that if they’re physically accomplished, they too must be good yogis. However, yoga isn’t really ever about the poses but rather about enlightenment and expanding consciousness. The second yoga sutra of Patanjali can be translated as “Yoga requires the calming of the fluctuations of the mind” (1.2 - Yogas citta vrtti nirodha) rather than thoust must touch thine palms to the floor in order to be in a state of union and equanimity. In other words, if you can breathe, you can do yoga. If you can calm your mind and reduce your suffering, you are well on the yogic path.

Over the past couple of months, my yoga practice has started to look different from what it previously looked like. I’ve switched from doing some yoga poses such as revolved pyramids, deep forward folds, and full wheel backbends. It’s not because I can’t do them, but when I do I trigger a deep sciatic nerve pain. For years, on and off, I’ve felt the pain, but it has gotten more pronounced and hasn’t been subsiding. Deep inside, I knew that something had to shift and I needed a voice other than my own to guide me into changing up my practice. Hence, I began to “do less” in what triggers my pain and to do more to create greater spinal stability. It means adding in a daily regime of stabilizing exercises, eliminating stronger/deeper poses, and tweaking how much I physically teach. The shift has been challenging as I was uncertain if I could tolerate resuming a full workload with such modifications. But I have and so far, so good. I’ve given myself permission to create something different and that feels inherently good. One thing that hasn’t shifted is the commitment to my personal morning practice. It includes movement, a breath-centered practice of stillness, meditation, and contemplation. In fact, when I was sharing with a friend the shift in my back pain, they asked if I was still able to “do yoga?” and instead of me answering, my husband said, “You’re on your mat just as much if not more!”

My thought of the week is to honor all forms of practice and how we shift and modify what we’re doing based on our physical, mental, and emotional state. As illustrated above, injury has shifted my practice and other catalysts for change come in the form of illness, emotional stress, and overwhelm. Sometimes life is just hard and we allow this to become the obstacle to getting on our mat, yet this is exactly the time when we need it the most.

Recently a student who sustained an injury was feeling as though they couldn’t do their practice. With a broken wing, they were out of action. In my reflection to them, only their arm was affected not the entire body, so this was the perfect opportunity to release the attachment to what we think our practice should look like to adjusting it to what we need and what will benefit us most deeply in the present moment. When we cling to our practice, holding expectations of that being “it”, we create suffering when it can’t be as it was before.

This is particularly powerful as we age. My practice that began around 1993 looked very different to what it looks like in the year 2020. It has morphed, evolved, and taken shape to what I need in the moment and it may never look the same as it did even six months ago. If I cling to that image of what “I used to be able to do” than I will create my own suffering. If I can re-frame it into what serves me in the highest essence of who I am today, I can dial down the fluctuations of the mind and find greater ease in what is.

And all of you can do this as well. What we need is the discipline to some form of a regular (daily) practice and someone to support us along the way. Like all who have come before me, I have teachers who have filtered their teachers’ influence and passed it along to me and I do the same. For those of us as practitioners, we utilize what resonates within us to create our own container for a personal practice. We offer ourselves solace in that this will change and evolve over our years on the mat, fine-tuning what it is that serves us on our deepest level.

Let go of thinking poses are the be-all and end-all. Open to the many possibilities and forms your practice can take. It’s a beautiful and empowering experience.