om mind Yoga 4 pregnancy & children^
We were told that you could get everything your body, mind
and spirit needed from an ashtanga yoga practice. I personally don’t
think this is true.
It was only a few years ago, when I first did a workshop with the
brilliant bloke who is now my teacher, that I realised it was okay to
say out loud that I did other activities with my body and that (shock,
horror) they were helping to balance out things in my body that my
yoga practice wasn’t addressing.
Our bodies are amazing things, and I could feel that mine was
benefitting from doing stuff that wasn’t a hardcore two-hour yoga
practice every day. So, whether consciously or unconsciously, I
started doing other things with it. Sometimes it was running; other
times it was walking; often it was horse riding.
But here’s the kicker: all of these extra-curricular things I was
doing with my body were contributing to my yoga practice and
vice-versa.
Yoga is not a competitive sport; you are not
competing with yourself or anyone else
I am so very grateful that social media wasn’t around when I was
first thinking about getting my non-bendy body into a yoga class for
the first time. (Yes, it was that long ago!) If I’d been surrounded by
even half the images of ‘yoga’ that we’re seeing these days I’d have
stayed on the sofa.
My perception would have been that yoga is only something a
person who is female, thin and/or ripped, head-to-toe in Lycra, so
bendy they could be in Cirque du Soleil, positioned artfully in front
of a temple/sunset/graffiti wall, could do.
I’d have thought that if my body couldn’t do that there was no
point in going to a yoga class. What’s more, I’d have thought that if
I didn’t want my body to be able to do that at some point, there was
also no point in going to a yoga class. I definitely would never have
thought that I’d become a yoga teacher.
Yoga is about using practical tools to help you become the
awesome person you are designed to be. It’s about finding ways
to break through all the stuff that’s in our own way of being happy,
calm, grounded, powerful, healthy, humans.
It is not about the strength of your core, your ability to balance
on one limb, or the range of motion in your pelvis, so don’t allow
yourself to get thrown off track by comparing yourself to folks who
think it is.
Yoga can be fun. If you want it to be
I think it was the all-kinds-of-brilliant David Swenson who said in one
of his workshops something along the lines of “It’s only yoga – so
why take it so seriously?” and I think he’s got a point.
If this is something you want to be doing for a long time, you’ve
got to make it enjoyable. (Unless you’re one of those people who
doesn’t agree with that sort of thing. If you are, we will never be
friends and you’re going to hate my classes!)
Of course, it’s only right that we show this amazing, ancient
tradition and everything it has brought to us generations of
Westerners, all the respect and reverence something as sacred and
potentially life-changing as this deserves.
But, if you can’t have a little chuckle when you’re desperately
trying to get one bit of your anatomy to touch another bit, for
reasons you’re suddenly not entirely convinced about, I think your
practice could be lacking a special little spark.^