I can’t tell you what yoga should or shouldn’t be. But I can tell you what it can or cannot be.
Yoga can be a series of physical postures that strengthen and stretch, leading to many positive benefits. But it can also be a single posture…or perhaps many different postures that you place your body into as you sense how the energy in your system wishes to flow. It can be something that is a natural expression of spontaneous arising motions…you physically express what is energetically in motion already within you and around you.
Whenever I hear someone say “I cannot do yoga…” and they mention an old injury or they say that they are not flexible enough I know that what they really mean is “I cannot do yoga as it has been defined to me so far.” Because in our culture yoga is mostly physical…with some “namaste’s” and “om shanti’s” and some incense thrown in for good measure. Yoga can be a physical practice. You can find some teachers who will add in some spiritual context. But what is missing is that yoga can be an inside art. It can come completely from within you. A yoga teacher can teach you how to listen to yourself to find what movements wish to happen through you…instead of just having you follow a preset series of “postures”.
Yoga from the outside in is what we you see in the magazines and in most studios. Yoga from the inside out is how the yoga you likely practice began. So…it begs the question…why are you practicing yoga from the outside in, if the original teachers did not either?
Where does yoga originate from? When did it start? What if I told you that the origins of yoga were inside of you right now? The very same way these forms and shapes were originated by yogi’s thousands of years ago, are available to you. How much does it cost? What will you be charged?
No money needed. It didn’t cost them anything. They didn’t learn from anyone. Really think about that…who taught the first yogi’s? Why do you think that you cannot learn the same way? How could what you learn from a yoga teacher outside of you…be more brilliant and personalized and tailored than what you can learn from inside of you?
You may read this and feel that I am against what I call “studio yoga”. But I am not against it at all. I feel though that a whole different perspective can be brought into the fold. That perspective being that studio yoga is only the beginning. Learning from a yoga instructor…the barest of beginnings. But we must start somewhere. My advice….Don’t stop.
But DO something additionally. It will cost you some time. And you will have to love yourself, your body, and the agreements you have made in this lifetime.
DO sit in silence. Find out what your body wants to do. Feel for the energy in your body and place your body into a position corresponding to that. There is a position that your body wishes to be in, that will allow the energies in you to circulate, to move, to release, to collapse and rise again…there is a up flow and a down flow like high tide and low tide. It’s always trying to happen through you. You may find yourself in one pose that lasts for 20 minutes. You may find yourself in poses that you have never seen before anywhere. There were never meant to be yoga “schools”. Or rather…poses do not actually belong to any single school or grouping. Yoga was never intended to be like a religion. “oh you do Ashtanga…I do Anusara”.
Yoga, in original form was a spontaneously arising series of prayers…a way for the individual to move dynamic spiritual energies…and it happened to be expressed in various physical postures. It was only when these postures were taught to or copied by others that “yoga” became “yoga”. Before that, it was just prayer. Names were given later. Schools and divisions happened later.
Yoga CAN be a way to allow you to dance and play with this energy. And it’s one thing that studio yoga can never offer you. No teacher can tell you that their preset series of motions are what perfectly aligns with your inner movements and momentum. Only you will know. Studio yoga can give you that A B C’s. Perhaps a basic vocabulary, but not inflection. It cannot construct prose for you.
To me studio yoga, out of what is actually available to a yogic aspirant…is nothing more than child’s pose. Just the beginning.
So use it as that. A solid beginning. An introduction.
And again, at the risk of sounding resoundingly redundant…I am speaking in generalizations and making it sound as if I am against yoga done in any studio anywhere.
These words and tone are chosen carefully though, to challenge an established norm.
