A reflection on my yoga journey: patience, progress, and practice.
If you’ve ever dabbled in yoga, I’m sure you can agree it’s not always as peaceful, calming, or picturesque as social media implies. In fact, it can be quite the opposite; stressful, frustrating, and tiresome. There is unsteadiness. There is failure. There are oftentimes agonising moments of watching sweat slowly drip off the tip of your nose onto the puddle-ridden rented mat beneath your squinted gaze. Like many others who return to the mat again and again, it has become one of those keystone habits that quietly shapes every other area of living and has taught me so much beyond the poses.
Small confession: I have a somewhat challenging relationship with yoga. Don’t mistake my meaning, I adore the practice. It grounds me, gives me purpose, and challenges me in ways I never thought possible. But, the truth is, I’m not very good at it. I am still miserably inflexible. I can only hold Sirsasana A (headstand) for about eight seconds before toppling over. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to manoeuvre my legs into Padmasana (Lotus Pose). Sometimes this stuff really hurts; sometimes it feels like it’s just not meant for my body.
But is asana (Sanskrit for seat or pose or posture) mastery all that it means to be “good” at yoga? I don’t think so. Because the most I’ve ever gotten out of a yoga class has always been directed more towards the mental challenge than the physical one. I want to share my growing love for yoga and the lessons it has offered me as a kind of moving meditation.
I can’t quite recall my first ever introduction to the practice, but I would have been young, and it would have been some mandatory activity before swim or water polo practice in my early tween years. I don’t remember exactly how I felt or how I perceived yoga then. I’m sure it just felt like stretching. I’m sure then that I wasn’t too fussed, given my innate inflexibility swimmers are predisposed to.
Slowly, like a sapling taking root, yoga began to weave itself into the fabric of my life. It returned at different points until, eventually, it had quietly taken root completely, as though it had been there all along. I’ve always been fairly active; between the aforementioned swim and water polo teams, later, cross-country (another incredibly painful yet rewarding sport), and then I suddenly found myself booking into CorePower’s Yoga Sculpt classes. For those of you that don’t know, CorePower Yoga is the largest yoga studio brand in the United States, with more than 220 locations across 23 states. Its brand (although not limited to this audience) is highly effective and successful among young women in the United States, where I attended boarding school. In my senior year, I began sneaking off campus at the weekends to go to yoga classes in my best friend’s Jeep Wrangler, embracing the sweat and the stretch and the strength they gave me. It was kind of addicting, in a way. So much so that I somehow convinced my mother to let me stay in America and work as a Studio Assistant the summer after my senior year.
As a part of my contract, I was able to take classes every day, sometimes twice a day. My boss, an absolute showstopper of a woman (seriously, marathon runner, Iron Woman, 500+ hours of yoga teacher certifications), encouraged me to try her C3 class, which is a more intermediate-level Vinyasa class: fast-paced, heated (of course), and tough. I fell in love. Where sculpt and other athletics had challenged me physically, C3 added a mental and spiritual component that was unique, different, and moreish. I wasn’t very good. But I was trying. I was impatient at times, still competitive, and wondered helplessly why I was not instantly graceful. I wanted control, quick mastery, and visible progress. But in order to achieve that progress, I had to exit that mindset and learn to notice subtlety. I had to allow that awareness to extend beyond the mat, too, and realise that the same patience and presence often create more genuine growth than striving ever could in life.
When I returned home, and eventually came to university, I lost the routine I had built up in California. I had become a stressed, dissociating machine, walking around with the glazed expression of someone surviving rather than living. I still went to the gym almost daily, mostly out of obligation, but also out of the vague sense that moving was morally good. I was going out most nights, burning the candle at both ends, as my mother would say. I stopped running, which took a major toll on my physical and mental health.
However, while on winter holidays, I saw an ad for a discounted 200hr yoga teacher training course. My reasons for wanting the training were simple, albeit a little lame: I needed a reason, a spark, to get back into the practice, out of curiosity, and to understand the philosophy and science of yoga better. I managed to convince my parents to sponsor this particular endeavour, with the compromise that, if I wasn’t able to complete the course, or if I completed it but did not seek out a job in relation to the course, then I would owe them the five hundred or so dollars the course cost.
When we wrapped up second semester in May, I was finally able to devote myself to the course and begin my studies. I spent most of those months alone in the farthest southern corner of a remote Greek island, where I’ve spent the last ten summers. Fortunately for me, there wasn’t really much else to do, save for studying yoga theory, learning to sequence, and practising. It was perfect.
In these months, I learned more and read more and practised more. I learned about patience, something I knew was crucial to the practice but had always pushed to the back of my mind. I confronted the frightening inversions of headstands, handstands, Bakasana (crow pose), and while I’m still not expertly skilled, I’m eager every morning to try and try again. Discovering that these poses were not nearly as dangerous as my imagination had envisaged became a lesson in trust and fear. I learned that the benefits of certain postures extend beyond the physical, that opening up the chest and heartspace can actually encourage me to open myself spiritually and emotionally, too.
Perhaps the most important lesson yoga has taught me thus far is that progress isn’t linear. There are such things as good days and bad days. Some mornings, I rise from my bed with ease. Other mornings, it aches and creaks for reasons I cannot explain. Some days I can do a pull up. Some days I need about four assistant bands. Learning to observe these changes, respect the body’s signals, and adjust is not just for yoga, or for the practice, but for all aspects of life. I’m in no way faithful to this mentality every moment of every day. I still get frustrated. I still feel insecure when someone is more flexible or stronger than me. But hey, admitting that is the first step. It’s not a straight road, but a weaving and winding path. It will get better. It may even get worse. But that’s okay. We listen, acknowledge, and keep on returning.