Mark Whitwell ~ Excellent!

What is Yoga?

"Yoga's not about learning to stand on your head; it's about learning to stand on your feet." 

I forget who said this to me, but I think it beautifully encompasses what the practice of yoga can be.   Yoga is not about learning to stand on your head, it's not about contorting your body uncomfortably into poses that feel awkward or painful. 

In this country, when we talk about yoga, for the most part, people think of the physical aspects of the practice.   What might spring to mind are the varied poses and positions that you’ll find in a typical yoga class, or sometimes people will think of the way people sit when on a yoga mat.

 

The truth is, there are as many entry points into yoga as there are people on the planet.  For some, getting in down dog and moving through a vinyasa (or series of poses) allows them to move in deeper to themselves.  For others, staying still and focusing on the breath to still the mind brings them in deeper.  For still others, getting into themselves means working with their hands – gardening, woodworking, heck, it could be dishwashing!  Can it be that we are all practicing yoga?  YUP! Yoga teachers say all the time (and I really believe) that yoga is for everybody.  I still maintain that is true, because yoga is a system of living, of remembering yourself and your own divinity, in whatever style or manner you get there.

This is worth repeating:  Yoga is a system of living, of remembering yourself and your own divinity, in whatever style or manner you get there.

Most yoga studios and practitioners begin the practice of yoga with the asanas, the exercise program that moves the physical body.  I’ve always understood that this is because it was the most apparent part of ourselves.  Often, the body is the easiest thing to tap into, to connect to and to realize.  One can physically feel and see one’s body.  So when we move the body, we begin the first line of connection to our humanness.  Many practitioners stop here – yoga as exercise; moving the body through poses. This is fine, and this may be where people stay for some time (maybe a whole lifetime.)  But yoga isn’t only about exercise; at its base, it’s about awareness.  When you move your body with awareness, you’re practicing yoga. 

Pranayama – breathwork – is another aspect of the yoga practice.  So we breathe purposefully and meaningfully.  Breathing is the only necessary bodily function we can choose to do with awareness or without.  We can manipulate our breath by thinking about it, in a way we can’t, say, manipulate our digestive process by thinking about it.  Then we can decide to stop thinking about the breath, and continue to breathe regardless.  (Some would argue that you CAN manipulate your digestive process by thinking about it, but I think the point is clear.)  What differentiates yoga breathing from your normal breath is that you bring your awareness to the breath.  When you breathe with awareness you are practicing yoga.  

So we bring awareness to the breath and awareness to the body, by directing the mind and the attention to this present moment.  Whether moving or being still, I invite students to be in observation of this present moment and nowhere else. What does it feel like to breathe this breath?  What does it feel like to be in your body?  Can you really notice your feet on the floor?

This practice of moving and watching, of breathing and watching, allows yoga practitioners a level of self awareness that opens the door to an even more profound yoga practice.  And the whole point what we do at Bristol Yoga Studio is to provide a forum for people to find and continue on whatever path serves them best; it's about each person finding their entry point in whatever manner is most appropriate for them.