Yoga is a Practice!

It is 1:30 in the morning, and I very well should be in deep sleep, but I wanted to write today, so here I am.

I have been practicing yoga for almost 15 years.

I don’t remember exactly how I landed at Firefly Yoga Studio, across the street from Bradley Fair in Wichita, Kansas. But I remember always looking forward to my next class.

Soon after, I moved to Boston, and yoga became one of the only things that felt familiar in a new city.

Over the years, yoga has been this space for me to reflect, resist, embrace, let go, and then pick myself back up again.

When I teach, I always try to give people a glimpse of my own personal practice. There is something very special about sharing something you have loved for so long with those who roll their mat with me.

But there has been a shift in the way we perceive yoga, and sometimes it makes me sad. In the world of social media, aesthetic yogis, perfect poses, matching sets, and carefully curated practices, I think we have developed a new obsession with doing yoga.

A long time ago, one of my teachers told me: “You don’t do yoga.”

At the time, I don’t think I fully understood what she meant. I do now.

And I can empathize with her more than I could then. I imagine how stage it must have felt to watch people approach yoga as something to conquer. A pose to achieve. A flexibility goal. Another accomplishment to add to the list. But yoga is not a prize. It is not something you finish or a destination to reach.

Yoga is a practice.

And like any thing in life, it requires us to keep showing up. Not necessarily to achieve something, but to pay attention.

I often remind people during my classes to feel the pose, feel their breath, notice where their mind is, come back to their body, and come back to their breath.

And I need these reminders just as much as anyone else. Even after almost 15 years of practicing yoga, I still catch myself going through the motion, thinking about what I need to do next, or simply not paying attention.

But isn’t that what practice is about?

Just like meditation, our minds wander. WE NOTICE, and WE COME BACK. Sometimes we have to come back a hundred times, and that’s okay. The work is not in staying perfectly present, but it’s making the effort to return, again and again.

Maybe our shrinking attention spans make it harder for us to practice yoga. Maybe it is easier to just do yoga.

But maybe we can show up on our mats and not just do the pose, but actually feel it. Maybe feel it even for a microsecond.

And then maybe, just maybe, we will stop doing yoga and start practicing it.