Om Yoga Magazine — January 2018

om lite

A

pparently in class I often say “if it’s part of your

practice...” before I offer some variation of a pose or

transition. Someone came up after class to ask me what

I meant. As a relative newcomer to yoga, he found the

expression weird. Yoga teachers talking a weird language

(and I don’t mean Sanskrit) – whoever would imagine that? Yes, I know

there are lots of strange expressions teachers use, but like many others

I’m sure, I try hard not to slip into using them. If you’re around yoga

classes long enough, you can’t help pick up jargon or the fashionable

cue of the moment. But what’s weird to one person is normal to

another. Time was when “opening the heart space”, “blossoming your

buttocks”, “breathing in through the crown of your head” and many

others besides were all expressions that had me in stitches. Okay,

some of them still do, but other variations along similar lines have now

become my everyday language.

So a reality check from a confused student is always a good thing.

It keeps things real, it reminds me that clear communication is vital,

and that people hear and learn in different ways. So what was his

confusion with this expression? It was about the word ‘practice’. “Is this

my practice?” he asked, gesturing around the studio being vacated by

the lunchtime class.

His question reminded me of my first yoga teacher, who used to end

each class with an injunction to “offer up your beautiful practice”, which

always left me wondering how she could look so kindly on my clumsy

novice transitions and see beauty in my awkward shapes – as well as

the billion dollar question of who or what I might offer this practice to!

I used to be slightly awestruck by her, how physically graceful she was,

how loving and patient with her students, and I wondered whether she

was born this way or had somehow evolved magically into the yoga

goddess I saw. I never thought to ask her what ‘practice’ meant, though

that might have given me my answer.

So I wasn’t sure how to respond to my student. I tend to think that

practice just is what it is. But that’s an irritating yoga teacher answer if

ever I heard one! It might sound deep and spiritual, but it’s not actually

very helpful. I suppose there’s no good answer because yoga defies

quick definitions or easy summaries, it ultimately takes the form each of

us needs it to. Classes or home practice, energetic and sweaty or slow

and meditative, chanting, pranayama, spiritual, secular, with goats or

with beer.... All this is yoga – apart from the last two perhaps!

But whatever yoga is, you just have to show up for it and do it, again

and again. And that’s the practice.

Victoria Jackson lives and practices in Oxford. She is registered with

Yoga Alliance as a vinyasa yoga teacher

Whatever yoga means to you, you just have to show up for it. By Victoria Jackson

What is

practice?