Unpacking what yoga is, what it means, takes years and years. Maybe lifetimes and lifetimes.
“Now, personal practice tends to start as all or nothing, a big mess, once in a while, binge and purge cycles. Once a person has the desire or willingness for it, they tend to get overwhelmed and confused, thrown around by all the possibilities. ”
But I will assume - since you are here - that you know “yoga” does not mean postures. Postures are one of the tools of yoga. But just like a fork is not food, and you can have food without a fork and eat without a fork and sometimes forks are used not for eating and etiquitte but as weapons, the tools of yoga (here, poses) are not ‘yoga’: you can do yoga without the poses fork, and just because someone is wielding the poses-fork does not mean that they understand anything.
Okay, so we know that yoga does not equal poses, but poses are a tool. Next thing to learn is that yoga is about the self. Maybe not at the beginning. But if you want understanding, learning, and something that actually changes the way your body mind functions rather than a stop gap, yoga is a self thing.
I mean that yoga begins and really starts to take off only once a person begins a home, personal, self guided practice.
Discerning the difference between yoga classes and home practice is hard. Most of us have enough experience with classes (or, increasingly in our internet based world, a video) that we now have certain expectations of what ‘practice’ should look and feel like.
But your home practice tends not to look or feel like a class. In a home practice, you aren’t trying to replicate the experience of class on your own, you’re letting go of that and just meeting yourself. I repeat: home practice isn’t supposed to look, feel, or be the same as what happens in a yoga studio.
A home yoga practice: no video, no teacher guiding you, no fancy studio with pretty smells and a lovely distance from your home responsibilities. Please note that there is nothing wrong with going to a yoga class. But home practice is different, and more important.
A person who practices at home is discovering themselves. They are listening to themselves, meeting themselves, starting to work with the delicate questions of self-discipline and taking responsibility, self guidance, and meditation. This also means facing and undoing perfectionism, procrastination, waiting for the right mood or moment, and unrealistic or irrational thought patterns and goals. Home practice is where you truly learn to support and be with yourself. It also involves sitting in the midst of your actual life - your living room, your stuff, your schedule, your thoughts, your feelings. It is an incredible journey of self-discovery. It’s the beginning of integrity. It’s a process of developing somatic and emotional literacy, which is also somatic and emotional discovery. It’s becoming your own healer, friend, I can be so bold as to say ‘destiny’. After all, that’s what the ancient texts say. I’m not making this shit up.
I suppose that is exactly why most people have a hard time doing it. The old quip about most unhappiness being an inability to sit in a room with oneself.
Home practice is sitting in a room with oneself.
It is only here that you start to actually learn yoga. You learn how much you know and what you would like to learn more about. You learn what you can do and you learn what your excuses are. You learn to be self-motivated, and you really start to discover your emotions, your patterns, your beliefs, and your needs.
If you explore the source texts or listen to good teachers, they will tell you over and over again: yoga is self discovery. Yoga is self-realization. Yoga is self discipline. Yoga is self-liberation.
Which has to mean, if you take it seriously, that yoga is something YOU. DO. YOURSELF.
Teaching people that yoga practice is yoga class (and this is sometimes extended to teacher training, or retreat, or a renunciate life, or an influencer persona, a monk, a perfect handstand), is often doing a disservice to students. They are not being given tools, but following the leader and building deep subliminal patterns of DEPENDENCE, not independence and self exploration. They develop attachments and all sorts of projections around and at the teacher, other students, or the various environmental and time things of a studio. They aren’t learning consistency or discipline so much as expression and exploration (good things, but consistency and discipline are more important if we want healing and liberation). They aren’t learning presence and self determination, but escapism.
Escapism is a very hard pattern to unlearn.
Something happens when you try to practice in your own space. Without a video or music (there are times music can be part of the practice, depending, but if we’re listening to music we tend to be zoning out and listening to the music, not listening to the breath, our own mind, or our body). Something happens when you try to recall what you have learned, what you know, how to do, on your own. Something - all sorts of realizations about your mind, your motivations, your habits - comes crystal clear when we start to choose/think/do “I can do this for myself. I can handle this. I will.”
Now, personal practice tends to start as all or nothing, a big mess, once in a while, binge and purge cycles. Once a person has the desire or willingness for it, they tend to get overwhelmed and confused, thrown around by all the possibilities. I have heard five hundred stories about how a person ‘committed’ to peloton or meditation for two weeks, and then went nine months without. A thousand stories of how someone went to teacher training and then felt more lost and imposter syndromey than before they started. I’ve heard so many people say they wish they could meditate, or had a spiritual practice, etc etc etc.
Hence: working with a mentor or time honored thing is helpful.
A mentor can make suggestions, validate your experiences, help you focus, give you ideas and resources, keep you accountable while also challenging your perfectionism or unrealistic, irrational thoughts and behaviors.
Just a couple things to keep in mind:
five minutes, one pose, a few breath, two minutes of meditation IS YOGA. Your home practice may not involve a yoga mat, a change of clothes, forty five minutes, savasana, or sweat.
At first, people start with something like ‘one yoga pose’ or ‘I’m going to meditate’ every day, and it is often the last thing they get to in the day. That’s okay! It’s a great start.
At the most true and basic level, it doesn’t matter what you do. Something is 100% better than nothing. Doing anything that gets you into the body and the present moment, brings awareness to breath, makes a choice is good enough. Anything that soothes your soul and reminds you you have one works (prayer, meditation, gratitude practices, devotional reading, mantra recitation, sacred objects like an altar, candle, worry stone, murti). Dance for a minute. Take a couple of big stretches. Get into your five senses. Tap, massage, or stroke your own body. Focus the eyes on the horizon if you’ve been staring at the computer screen or indoors all day long; focus the eyes on an object close to hand if you’ve been running around all day. Sigh out loud for five breath, blow through your lips like a horse to relieve facial and jaw holding, stand in mountain pose to feel present and grounded, warrior to feel your strength and courage, or tree to find equanimity. Lie down and progressively relax for a few minutes. It is all, all, good and you do actually know enough. For some people, setting a timer for 5, 10, or 15 minutes and scrolling through this stuff is a great beginning. For others, setting a once a day reminder. For some, connecting it to something like your morning coffee, leaving the office end of day, brushing your teeth, or a ‘trigger’ like noticing tight shoulders or held breath. All golden.
Next, finding a consistant time in your schedule is the deal breaker. This is entirely dependent upon your all ready happening life: kids, family, work, time management basics. For many, morning practice is easiest. But for some, work and family make this difficult. After work or evening makes more sense and should be embraced.
Having a plan, an outline, something you have previously memorized or are currently working on is how you break through the ‘what on earth, out of all the possible things I could do, should I do?!’ This doesn’t mean that you’ll do the same thing for the next seven years or forever: it means this is what you are doing now. Repetition and mastery and process, actually addressing your goals and needs, your personal situation, starts to come into focus here. It’s not just ‘yoga’, at that point, but personal revolution. It is growth. It is learning. It is overcoming your personal likes and dislikes or moods and dependency on the situation or time or convenience. But that does require perseverance, commitment, dedication, and lots of repetition.
Consistency does not mean every single day, but generally over the big picture course of time. We kill ourselves with the ‘I missed a day, I have to start all over at the beginning’ mentality. The more consistent you are over several months, there will be a great scattering of days you didn’t practice but a general trend toward progress. This, too, is very basic human psychology stuff. It’s the difference between ideals/perfection/someday and actual practice.
My main point here: you have all the tools you need. I will probably draw out each of the bulleted points in future, but for now it’s important people hear and have reflected back to them: you have the tools, you have the capacity, you know enough and are enough. Once we start a personal practice, studio or classes become a wonderful supplement. They can be for fun.
If you want to chat as a way to hone in on your own personal practice, I’m around. If you want to bring some traditional yoga and the implicit self practice that happens in mantra recitation, two new classes are beginning in May. (Bhū Sūktam Tuesdays, Nārāyaṇa Sūktam Thursdays).
Whatever you do, please remember that you have enough, you know enough, you can take care of your mind body today. Given the external stressors these days, your own wellbeing is vital. It may feel frivolous or self-indulgent: this isn’t true.