Beyond Asana Blog

Isn’t it fascinating to consider the paradoxical nature of asana as a practice of spiritual well-being? Through the body, in the body, and using the body, we seek something beyond the body.
 
I recently received an email from a new student who wrote:
 
I am looking forward to classes that can remind me what it is all about...
 
Have you ever gotten so caught up in the what of your yoga practice that you lost sight of the why? I sure have. 
 
I remember once demonstrating a deep backbend in front of hundreds of people at an Anusara Yoga workshop. In that captivating atmosphere of being applauded by my peers, there’s no question I was mistaking outer achievement for inner attainment.
 
The thrill of ...

A few days before my Yoga for Turbulent Times workshop last Saturday, a participant sent me an email that read:
 
I am finding it hard to give myself permission to be joyful or happy in these times. My purpose is to radiate positivity and contentment in myself and others. This is challenging, to say the least, in these days of war, unrest, and climate calamity.
 
It reminded me of a recent New Yorker cartoon where a doctor is examining a patient and concludes: “Here’s your problem – it looks like you’re paying attention to what’s going on.”
 
I get it. It can be hard, even guilt inducing, to give yourself permission to be happy when you look around at a world so filled with suffering, destructi...

What’s your idea of happiness? Is it collapsing on the couch with some Netflix-and-chill at the end of a long week? The pleasure of enjoying your favorite morning beverage? The peace you experience after a good meditation? All of the above? None of the above? 

Happiness is a tricky concept because it is so subjective and it is often used as a general, overarching term to describe a whole range of pleasurable feelings we might experience. 

The yoga tradition describes three different types of happiness. These three types are based on the gunas, the three primal qualities of matter that constitute the material world.

Tamas is the principle of inertia and heaviness. Tamasic happiness i...

In indigenous ways of knowing, we understand a thing only when we understand it with all four aspects of our Being – mind, body, emotion, and Spirit.

—Greg Cajete, as quoted in Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
 
The indigenous view on the holistic nature of knowledge very much resonates with the yogic notion of knowledge. 

Jnana, the Sanskrit word for knowledge, isn’t only about understanding something intellectually, it’s about knowing it through your own direct experience. Therefore, it involves more than just the mind. Knowledge in yoga is a cognitive experience that involves your whole being - body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

In the yoga tradition, there are many models of th...

I believe that going deeper in your yoga practice isn’t always about doing more or working harder. It’s about getting more bandwidth out of everything you are already doing.

I’m terrible at taking care of houseplants. When I do get around to watering them, the soil is sometimes so parched and dry that the water isn’t absorbed. It just runs off the surface.
 
I think this is a good analogy for trying to go deeper in your yoga practice only by doing more and more asana. If the ground of your mind and heart aren’t prepared to receive and integrate a deeper experience, all that effort remains on the surface of the physical body. It doesn’t penetrate deeper to affect the mind, touch the heart, or...

When I tell new students that I have a love/hate relationship with some of the poses I regularly practice and teach, they often breathe a sigh of relief. After all, the challenge of learning how to put your body into new and unusual shapes isn’t necessarily pleasant, so it’s comforting to know that even someone who has been doing yoga regularly for 30 years doesn’t always enjoy it.
 
For example, I don’t like holding Warrior 2 for 1 minute. I still do it sometimes though, because I know that my achy hip will feel better afterward, that my mind will be sharper when I get back to work, and that my energy will be more vibrant for the rest of the day.

Being able to move through life with greate...

One of the first things I teach students is that the term yoga refers both to a state and to the practices that lead you toward that state.

The idea that the journey is the destination might sound like a new-age platitude, but it’s there right from the beginning of the tradition.

I want people who are new to yoga to understand that yoga isn’t some lofty goal that they'll achieve one day when they finally nail a handstand. 

It’s something that you practice from the minute you roll out the mat out to the final bow of your head at the end of a session.

Yoga includes, and perhaps is characterized by, the mindset that’s cultivated throughout their practice.

What is the yogic mindset, anyw...

How does your yoga practice change the way you show up for life? How you work? The way you are with your family? Is yoga helping you to become more of who you want to be in the world?

These are questions that have no right or wrong answer, in fact, at the beginning, no answers at all might arise. That’s okay, because just asking the question sets the stage for the beginning of self-reflective awareness.

The act of asking questions send a signal to the brain to self-reflect and starts to build the muscle of inner discovery. It’s the kind of inquiry that allows you to bridge your yoga practice and your life. This is the doorway into this multi-dimensional way of knowing with the body, min...

I remember once being instructed by a meditation teacher to “Think with a smile.” I’ve always loved that instruction, and even though I admit I am not always able to do that, it’s an image that has stayed with me as a reminder that the way I experience life depends— sometimes quite dramatically—on the inner attitude I bring to situations.

It’s helpful when I can think with a smile because even though the outer situation doesn’t necessarily change, it shifts the way I relate to it and generally makes things better and not worse. 

Have you ever noticed the slight smile often depicted on the faces of the gods and goddesses of Hinduism, Buddhism, and other Eastern spiritual traditions? In S...

I have a lot of warm socks. But this pair is different from all the others in my drawer because it was knitted for me as a gift from a student.
 
Isn’t it true that when you receive something as a gift you have a different relationship with it than a similar item that you’ve paid for? 
 
In her insightful and heartening book, Braiding Sweetgrass, indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about her experience of picking wild strawberries from the field as a young girl and considering them gifts from nature. She recalls how different and odd it felt when she saw the same type of strawberries for sale at the market. 
 
Although yoga isn’t, and has never traditionally been, exchanged as a gif...