Beyond Asana Blog

Sounds silly, right? The idea of grading performance in yoga so obviously contradicts the most fundamental reasons for practicing in the first place.

After all, yoga isn't about external validation or performance metrics—it's about something far more profound and authentic. Seth Godin captures this tension perfectly:

The prevailing system of the educational-industrial complex puts the fear of a ‘C’ in us. The entire point of twelve (or sixteen) years of our lives isn’t to learn anything, it’s to get an ‘A’…What if instead, we decided to opt in to a different path, the path of always learning?
 
Yoga embodies this revolutionary approach to learning. It's not just a destination—it's an ongo...

Oh, our dear minds.

Like butterflies, they flit and flutter — sometimes restless, sometimes weary — until they find a place to land.

In yoga, that landing can feel inward: settling into your breath, grounding in the body, or arriving into presence itself.

And yet, the inward journey is never only inward, and our experiences in yoga aren’t ever truly separate from our world.

Each breath has the power to usher us into the remembrance of our shared existence. Every sensation can return us to the web of gravity and ground. Each mindful movement can reunite us with the wider rhythms of Earth herself.

Landing inside yourself doesn’t have to mean retreating from the world; it can be a redis...

Oh, not to be separated, shut off from the starry dimension
By so thin a wall.
What is within us
If not intensified sky
Traversed with birds
And deep
With the winds of homecoming?

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Uncollected Poems, translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

It never ceases to amaze me how simply approaching yoga as a practice of homecoming can soften edges I didn't even know were holding me separate and small.

These invisible walls—woven from daily stresses, old patterns, and the weight of constant doing—seem to dissolve the moment we shift our perspective and turn inward.

Life has a way of narrowing our sense of self. The demands of work, relationships, and survival can gradually clo...

When in doubt, put your head down. That's my go-to strategy on days when nothing seems to be going right. 

Whether I rest my head on a block in a standing forward fold, settle Child's Pose on floor, or simply lean forward at my desk, the gentle pressure to the forehead works quickly - almost magically - to create a sense of spaciousness that quiets agitation and bring near-instant calm. 

Eckhart Tolle describes the dual nature of our awareness in terms of foreground and background. The foreground is our thinking mind, where most of us spend our time. It correlates with the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for executive functioning - the rational part that makes decisio...

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.

- Joanna Macy

In yoga, we’re often encouraged to bring all parts of ourselves to our practice—our strength and vulnerability, our joy and sorrow. But what happens when the world's pain feels too heavy to carry? What do we do with the heartbreak we feel for the suffering we see around us?

Joanna Macy—Buddhist eco-philosopher, activist, and root teacher of the Work That Reconnects—revolutionized my understanding of what it means to show up authentically in yoga. Now nearing the end of her life, her extraordinary body of work continues to illuminate the path forward.

Like many of us, I'd spent years cultivating the ability to ret...

To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe - to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words. – Joanna Macy

I first read these words more than 30 years ago posted outside the changing room at the World Yoga Center. I remember thinking, Wow! What a way to live!  New to yoga and to spiritual life altogether, Joanna’s words sparked something revelatory within me: a thrilling vision of what it could mean to be truly alive - and the possibility that simply my existence was cause for wonder and reverence.

In the years that followed, yoga became my path to awakening this vision. ...

When the world feels like it’s crumbling and uncertainty seems to flood every corner of our lives, we need tools that help steady us. Here are two powerful approaches you can cultivate through your yoga practice to create space for peace and perspective: getting bigger and getting smaller.

Sometimes we need to step back - way back - and remember that in the grand sweep of time, each of us is a fleeting spark in an infinite cosmos. Even when everything feels like it’s falling apart (and maybe it is), life continues its ancient and unceasing dance. Nothing can stop time from moving forward or life from expressing itself. This realization of our place in a vast, ever-unfolding universe can ...

Sometimes, the most profound benefits of yoga show up not in our strongest moments - but in our most vulnerable ones.

A student recently shared a story with me that powerfully illustrates this. She had practiced yoga for decades, valuing what she always considered the main benefits: increased strength, improved flexibility, and better stress management. These were meaningful, of course - but as she would come to realize, they were just the surface of how yoga would support her.

When tragedy struck and she lost her son unexpectedly, her practice became her lifeline. She was amazed - and deeply grateful - to discover that her daily practice had become a welcoming sanctuary. A place to anc...

As the light reaches its annual peak, we’re invited into a rare and powerful moment of stillness. Here's how yoga can help you meet that pause with presence.

Though we usually think of time as moving forward in a straight line, we can also see it as cyclical. The rhythms of day and night, the changing seasons, and the passage of years all circle back to a point of culmination before beginning anew.

In the cycle of the seasons, the Summer Solstice marks such a turning point - the moment when light reaches its peak, before the days begin to gradually shorten. It’s a pause, a pivot, the still point in the swing of the pendulum.

These moments of pause—those tiny spaces where momentum comes...

When I started yoga in my twenties, I could "do" all the poses. With a naturally flexible body and a background in dance and gymnastics, even some of the most advanced asanas came easily to me.

Yet despite my physical abilities, my inner dialogue was anything but yogic. Long-standing patterns of perfectionism and self-judgment dominated my mental chatter. It wasn't until I learned about yoga's deeper vision of the human being that this began to shift.

The nondual philosophies of yoga view each of us as expressions of a singular, unified, and divine consciousness.

While all paths of yoga recognize an essence within each person that is fundamentally good and noble, it’s only the nondual ...