Don’t trust #yoga
Yoga is for everyone — and it’s more than you expect
What do you think yoga is all about?
Here is what some people may say:
Yoga is what young flexible people do to get even more flexible.
It's not really exercise, its stretching.
It’s about doing the splits (or headstand or …).
It involves weird chanting.
It’s only for women.
It's about doing a lot of Sun Salutations, really quickly.
It’s something you do in a group class at a yoga studio.
You need to be healthy to do yoga because it involves lots of acrobatics.
This is what these statements are actually saying:
Yoga is not for me, yoga is for other people.
Yoga is something you are good or bad at.
Yoga is a physical exercise.
Yoga is all about stretching.
By the time you have finished reading this article, I hope to convince you that yoga is a practice with a whole host of benefits and that yoga is for everyone – including you.
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When I started my yoga teacher training in London, we had to write a short essay answering, “What is yoga to you?” All of us answered something that focused predominantly on the physical practice of yoga, the postures, and sometimes on the feeling we had when practicing. Everyone loved the getting stronger and more flexible, and the feelings of ease and stillness that yoga cultivates. In my answer, I also added that yoga had helped me reconnect to my body and deeply relax after I developed long covid, helping me in my recovery.
And this is all still true – but as our 16-month course unfolded, we learnt a lot more about the many layers to yoga.
The ultimate goal of yoga
In ancient yogic philosophical texts, the role of yoga was to still the turnings of the mind. But this is not the ultimate goal: the ultimate goal is that by stilling the turnings of the mind, we can start to see our true nature.
Yoga is stilling the fluctuations of the mind.
- Patanjali Yoga Sutras 1:2
A thought experiment
Imagine that you are standing in front of an old mirror. Once upon a time, when the mirror was completely new, the glass on the mirror was so clear that you almost couldn’t even see the glass. Like you were seeing yourself so clearly, you weren’t even looking at your own reflection: you were looking at you, seeing yourself exactly as you are.
But over time, the glass became dusty, dirty, tarnished. Your reflection and the world around you became blurry, distorted. Left along, maybe the glass even developed stains that can’t be removed. Looking at yourself in the mirror, your image is completely obscured or distorted – you almost can’t see yourself standing there. Maybe your mind’s eye starts to fill in what your eyes can’t see. Maybe eventually you stop looking.
The mirror is your mind
The mirror here is your mind. Your thoughts and behaviours are the initial specks of dirt that muddy your reflection. From this, your mind create stories, habits, and self-images. These become thought patterns, emotional patterns, or physical patterns that keep distorting or obscuring your reflection.
None of this is anyone’s fault -- this is just how our brains are wired. If we think a thought repeatedly or take certain actions multiple times, these become encoded in our brains and our bodies. They become easy, or habitual. And logically, why would your mind and body 'waste' energy on doing something that's harder?
But this clouds the internal mirror we have, which helps us see ourselves. We start to believe that these stories, habits, and self-beliefs are just ‘fact’. “That’s just the way it is.” “I’m an anxious person.” “I’m an ill person.” “I’m not young / flexible / healthy so I can’t do yoga.”
But these are creations of our minds, a result of not being able to see ourselves clearly.
How yoga helps
Practicing yoga means slowing down, being intentional, and focusing the mind and the body. This creates the space to notice that the mirror that you are seeing yourself in is actually not very clear or helpful. It’s blurry, dirty, or distorted. Gradually, over time, yoga helps create the space and the tools to help clean away some of this dirt - and to notice when the dirt is building up again. Yoga is a practice to truly see ourselves as we are. And this greater self-awareness is powerful and something that everyone can benefit from.
That’s not all: there are many day-to-day benefits of yoga
That might sound a bit lofty — and that’s OK — but yoga has so many positive benefits on your day-to-day life.
Yoga can bring about greater physical ease, a sense of being more comfortable in your body. And yes, this may include becoming more flexible - but it can also mean becoming stronger or having more stability, which is very important as we age. It can be great for helping with injuries, injury prevention, or physical imbalances. Personally, I am using yoga as well as Pilates to regain some of my strength once I was more ready post covid. I noticed that within a couple of months of layering in a more physical practice, I felt stronger and healthier -- my posture even improved.
Yoga can also bring about greater feelings of calm, as it helps you be present and aware, and more connected to yourself. For myself, yoga, especially Restorative Yoga, was absolutely key in helping me learn how to rest and to calm down my nervous system after covid.
Finally, yoga helps nurture relationships. It can encourage you to become more intentional and creates space between stimulus and reaction -- so you can choose your words or action, instead the words or action coming out automatically. This is also something I have noticed in my own life, I am a more patient, responsive, and kinder person – less reactive.
Don’t trust what you see on Instagram
If you search #yoga on Instagram, the goal of yoga and the fact that may come as a surprise. You'll see lots of photos of bendy young women on beaches, striking fancy poses. Of course you'd be forgiven for thinking that yoga is only a physical practice, a form of exercise that prizes flexibility. And what's more, that yoga is only for young women who are already super flexible.
What this means for you
I hope I have shown that yoga is much more than what you see on Instagram, or your experience in that yoga class you went to a couple of years ago that made you vow never to do yoga again.
Yoga is:
For everyone
For every body – young, old, flexible, stiff
For seeing ourselves clearly
For connecting to our bodies and minds
For finding space in mind and bodies.
Curious? Want to experience these benefits first-hand?