What does being 'good at yoga' even mean?
The winner of the prize for "most meaningless phrase used by yoga students" is:
"Good At Yoga"
I have heard people use this phrase so many times over the years. It's always in reference to someone who finds the yoga asanas easy to do. In other words the person who uses the phrase "good at yoga" believes that it is important to be strong, flexible and (usually) lean. They see yoga as being equivalent to football, gymnastics or playing a musical instrument, and in order to be proficient in yoga one has to display talent and ability in achieving the asanas.To be clear, I do believe that it's important to cultivate flexibility, strength and to live a healthy lifestyle (that usually results in a lean body) but (as I have realised through my own yoga practice and through having a few hundred yoga students walk in our door over the last few years) many of us will never find the asanas to be easy.The level of ease that we experience in the ashtanga yoga practice is dependant on many factors. Genetics, age, previous injuries and illnesses, and diet are all very big factors in determining whether we'll find the asanas easy or difficult (or even impossible).I'll try to illustrate what I'm trying to get at by way of two hypothetical examples:Patrick is a 63 year old man who has a history of lower back pain. He ate a diet of rich and refined foods for many years, causing him to gain a lot of excess weight, and he has had reconstructive surgery on both knees after a car accident. He has been practising ashtanga yoga for 2 years and has found that it has given him a new lease of life; greater energy, more mobility, better concentration, and a general feeling of being a bit more in control of his life.Because of his physical limitations, age, and previous history Patrick is very limited in which asanas he can currently do. Some days, if he feels his energy is low, he does even less than he has been taught, but he does practise every day.When Patrick is practising yoga he is very conscious of focusing on his breath, he maintains uddiyana and mula bandha as much as possible and his drishti never wavers. If you see him practising you can tell immediately that he is a very focused practitioner. Jenny is a 32 year old woman who has a background in dance. She has also been practising for two years. She was able to do all of the poses of the primary series within about two weeks of starting and now practises about half of the intermediate series too. She can drop back into a backbend and catch her ankles easily. She is flexible, strong and lean.When Jenny is practising it is hard to tell whether or not she is breathing. She often looks around the room to see what the other students are doing and whenever someone walks into the shala she looks up to see who it is.Which of these students is "good at yoga"?In the context of the (quite obvious) thrust of this blog post it is easy to recognise that Patrick is really practising yoga in a more productive way, despite being dealt a set of cards which restrict him in lots of ways. However, if most of us were to witness these two practitioners side-by-side doing their practice then we might suggest that Jenny is "better at yoga".I have heard so many people over the years suggest that they would like to start to do yoga but they're just so inflexible that they'd be "awful at it". "I can't even touch my toes", they say, as if that fact alone somehow instantly disqualifies them from beginning a yoga practice. This would be the equivalent of saying "I can't take piano lessons because I really can't play the piano at all". It's nonsensical.Yoga practice is purely a means to gaining health, calming the mental chatter of the mind, and ultimately (if we're really on the right track) gaining some knowledge of ourselves. The asanas, breath, bandhas and drishti are tools to achieve that.Let us please retire the phrase "good at yoga".
"Yoga is a spiritual practice. The rest is just a circus"-Pattabhi Jois