Let’s get a few things straight, I am not your typical yoga teacher. I am a steak-loving carnivore, dive into wine-o’clock most evenings and love a party. I have tight hips so my knees don’t elegantly grace the floor in seated poses but skim somewhere around my ears and I drop way too many f-bombs. I have two young children, recently returned to the UK after 12 years overseas and am in the midst of what can only be described as a toxic divorce, so need I say more.
So that’s me, now what about yoga? Is it all sweat and stretch? Well, I like my clients to feel they’ve had a good physical workout, but, and it’s an important but: Yoga is more than the asana (pose), it’s also what you learn on the way to attaining these poses.
What do I mean?
Yoga means union – union of body, mind & breath. In the beginning concentrating on the pose itself has a calming effect as you think of nothing else but perfecting the pose. However, once you start combining the pose with your breathing this helps to clear space in both the body and mind and then yoga moves onto a whole different level and it starts to become a more powerful, all round holistic practice.
You see, as we start to release ourselves from our ego and forget about perfecting, but instead focus more towards awareness, a voyage of self-discovery begins, and we achieve a calmer mind both on and off the yoga mat.
Amit Ray, one of yoga’s great spiritual masters says, “Yoga is the artwork of awareness on the canvas of the body, mind and soul.”
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the ‘go to manual’ for all things yoga, states “yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind”. On one level all asanas benefit both the external body and cleanse internally – the organs, the hormones, the nervous system, flushing out toxins, reversing the aging process. But by also bringing attention to our breath, over time the waves in our mind calm and we get to the point where we have created a sense of space in our mind or we are only thinking of the pose and the breath – either way we are in a state of flow or in ‘the zone’ which, many believe it, is the secret of happiness. Put simply, as only Buddha can, ‘Rule your mind or it will rule you.’
And that’s why yoga is not just the pose and can take you to a whole different plane than just the physical expression of the asana.