5 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Yoga

Musings from a teacher in the tradition

Namaste doesn’t mean what we’ve made it to mean

Things got lost in translation as yoga moved here to the west. When asked to reflect on this sanskrit share, many folks from south asian cultures say saying namaste at the end of a yoga class feels… awkward. A: it’s not really used in closing, it’s much more of a greeting in its origin culture. Even then, there isn’t reference of “I” as in the light in me honors the light in you”. While a lovely sentiment, we messed it up when we attached it to Namaste and made it something else - zoinks! As a teacher, I choose to end the classes I teach in other, creative ways. It’s always been important to me offer what I offer with the most respect to the practice and culture, I feel it’s my responsibility.

It’s following truths over trends

In the spirit of sharing a few of my truths in this article, it’s worth mentioning that yoga is subject to all the same movements and patterns of pop-culture. There’s a lot of fun movement trends generated in the social media space, I love how it gets everyone’s brains and bodies working. The practice of yoga at its heart will mean something different to each of us. There are different styles that come in and out of popularity, and there’s no one, right form. What it isn’t, though, is a series of flashy shapes and buzzwords. It’s a way of living. It arose from a need to find better ways to sit still in longer periods of meditation. It has an entire philosophy in and around it with oodles of insight and ethics for life.

The first 4 sentences of The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1:1) can be summed up like this:

Yoga is to still the fluctuates of the mind, otherwise, the movements of the mind appear to be the self.

e.g. You are not your mind and yoga can help figure it out

It’s not about doing it right

The number of times folks have apologized to me in class for not ‘being able’ to do what I’m doing….

These postures of yoga will look different in every BODY. We have vastly different shaped bones and they articulate with more of the same. Add in varying tissue pliability and neuromuscular systems and you’ve got two totally different warrior I’s. This idea of looking like your buddy on the next mat? Let that [sh*t] go.

It’s often divorced from it’s cultural context and subtle experience

Even and especially in yoga therapy, we run the risk of reducing the practice down to its physical components. There’s a deep healing potential for the musculoskeletal system; the postures can be chosen and sequenced in such a skillful way that allows for this. But it’s not yoga therapy, or yoga, when it’s uprooted from the philosophical and spiritual wisdom. It’s simply a fitness modality and heavily appropriated at that.

If this piqued your interest check out: Embrace Yoga’s Roots by Susana Barkataki

It’s not about being as bendy as possible

Yoga is more than achieving increasingly advanced shapes, more than benefits extending only as far as your bendiest reach.

From my lens as a coach and teacher, it’s the skill set we carry to move through life that makes or breaks our experience. In the practice of yoga lies a tremendous opportunity to develop the strength, breath, awareness, connection and coordination of it all to move through the ups and downs of life. Living more connected to yourself and connected to others.

I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely my kind of yoga.

Jai,

Elise