practicing yoga
recently, i’ve heard a lot of people say, “i’ve not done any yoga for x long,” and i keep wondering what that even means. i’ve been thinking about this for a while now. it even came up in a chat with my yoga hero, donna farhi. i had the absolute pleasure and privilege of spending a day with her, thanks to a friend’s generosity. she mentioned that people ask her if she practices daily, and that she’s just as confused about what they mean by that.
in this context, when we say “yoga,” are we only talking about asana? if so, to move away from our western view of yoga as just another form of physical exercise, shouldn’t we change the language to say, “i’ve not done any asana for x long”?
the yoga sutras of patanjali give us tools to still the fluctuations of our minds through ashtanga yoga, the eight limbs of yoga: yama (restraints), niyama(observances), asana (posture), pranayama (control of breath), dharana(concentration), pratyahara (sense withdrawal), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi(undeviated absorption).
asana is just the third limb of patanjali’s system. one limb. so when we say “i haven’t practised,” at least in my opinion, we’re ignoring a lot of the work that is being done. and let’s be honest, those other aspects are often more important.
another thing farhi mentioned is that we can do more yoga standing in a supermarket queue for ten minutes, just paying attention to our breath, than in a ninety-minute asana practice. mona often talks about this in her classes too.
i get and appreciate that some of us struggle to access certain states without asana, but outside of a class setting, does everything just stop? what about practising being a decent human being? and the truth is, the people who said they haven’t practised for a while have been doing amazing work every day: showing up, being kind, protesting, sharing, meditating, not buying what’s unnecessary, and so on. which is why i find it a little bit frustrating that we’re taking a huge part of the work away by saying yoga when we’re actually just talking about movement.
since we’re careful about the language we use in so many other areas these days, so i just thought maybe it’s time to look at this in our community too.