My original teacher used to say, that if you are not fully with your breath and bandha, then you are just doing gymnastics. I think he was right. There is so much more to yoga than just the acrobatic fancy postures that we see everywhere at the moment. Incredibly, the postures or asana, are just a tiny proportion of the bigger picture that is yoga. Yoga was traditionally practiced throughout the ages to bring the practitioner to a higher state of consciousness. This is the purpose of the practice of yoga, to reach liberation, to free the mind of its constant chatter and become at one with the universe in a state of peace. To be able to act instead of react to the challenges that life throws at us. 

There are many routes to this goal. Meditation is a common way to achieve this state of mind, and so is postural yoga. But both only work if they are practiced in the way that they were designed to be practiced, with awareness of breath and body, and along with the rest of the eight limbs, or in the case of meditation, along with the rest of the Buddhist precepts.  Basic mindfulness or asana will not take you so deep.

Increasingly, in the modern world, we all want a quick fix, to become thin, to become calm, to de-stress. We are all short of time and space to properly look after ourselves. We see pictures in magazines or on social media of people doing yoga or meditation, on the beach or in a beautiful space, and they all look beautiful and slim and healthy and well. And we all want a slice of that. We want to be healthy and well. We want to be calm and peaceful and stress free. We want to live the dream! 

Yoga is offered everywhere in handy time saving packages of 45 minutes, 1 hour classes. Perfect if you have a busy life so that you can fit in a class after work, before going home for your evening meal. It is offered as a fitness regime to get a “yoga body”. It is offered in gyms and studios with loud music to accompany it so that you can barely hear what the teacher is telling you to do, let alone your breath. How can you focus inwards when you are struggling to hear the teacher over the loud music? 

The classes are often really fast paced so that you do not have time to catch your breath, and emphasis is put on hand stands and complex arm balances, which are not even possible for everyone. Each class is packed with postures to ‘open your hips’ or ‘open up your spine’ or ‘work your core’. The emphasis is on extreme flexibility and sweating. Teachers competing to see who has the best beats to accompany their class. Often you see people straining and stretching their bodies far beyond their capability in order to meet the demands of the posture, moving so fast from one posture to the next that their body is actually in fight or flight mode. They are struggling to catch their breath. The exact opposite of what yoga should be about. 

I fear that the essence of yoga is being lost. This beautiful practice, designed to take us to a higher state of being is now just becoming a part of the rat race. A circus, complete with acrobats.

What we don’t realise is that to actually reach that space of peace or higher consciousness takes years of dedication to your practice. Of finding your practice and sticking to it. Of rolling out your mat every day, even when you don’t feel like it. Of looking inwards at yourself and realising your patterns of behaviour and deciding to change those patterns to better ones. 

What we don’t realise at first is that once you embark on this journey it will completely change your life. You will find that you change your diet, you change your lifestyle, you become a really cheap date because you cannot tolerate alcohol and it’s after effects anymore! But the reward is that you are so much happier and content with life. 

Yeah of course we all have our moments when the world steps in and knocks us off balance but we find that we can recover more quickly and regain our balance.  This is what liberation looks like. This is what yoga is about, retaining that equilibrium, keeping your equanimity whatever life throws at you. And believe me, life is really chucking stuff at us at the moment. Life is really sending stuff to try us, to knock us off our balance and cause us to react rather than act. 

Yoga is needed more than ever at the moment, but real yoga. The kind where you go inwards and look at yourself. The yoga where you concentrate on your breath and become aware of your body while you do your postures, even if you are just sitting in meditation. This is the yoga that will change your life. This is the yoga that will keep you balanced and allow you to act rather than react to the situations that life throws at you. 

Daily practice really works, whether it is a stillness seated meditation or whether it is a full on asana practice. However, it only works when practiced regularly. 

The yoga sutras tell us this in  sutra 1.14

Over time, doing this practice helps us to become a better person. It makes us become more positive and accepting of life’s difficulties and keeps us more balanced. But just going through the motions of the asana will not work alone. We need to add awareness and concentration on breath. This is what will have the life changing effects. This is what makes the yoga happen. And it doesn’t happen over night either! You have to work at it. You have to be prepared to put in the time for yourself, to really look inwards at yourself, which is never easy. This is about changing you, about liberating you. 

So, the next time you go to your yoga class, see if you can find your breath, and focus in on it. Here’s a challenge, see if you can focus on your breath for the whole of the class. See if you can really let go in savasana at the end, and see how that makes you feel.  Enjoy your practice, relax into the postures and feel the difference.