After thousands of years of practice, doctors are finally agreeing upon the health benefits of Yoga. It builds strength and flexibility, improves posture, relieves stress, and lowers blood pressure. But more importantly, Yoga practice builds an inner strength and awareness that spreads out into all other aspects of life.
First Experiences
I first came to yoga by coincidence. My mom had been practicing yoga since she was sixteen, and decided to open up a yoga studio when I was sixteen. I ended up running the front end, checking people in and signing them up for classes. Day in and day out, I watched yoga and pilates classes, and watched the progress her clients made.
Yoga didn’t interest me then, but I did see some small miracles happen with a few clients. A few ladies with serious injuries regained mobility and strength from constant practice. I learned my mom was very good at what she did.
But that’s not very interesting to a sixteen year old, and so I didn’t practice yoga. I thought it was cool, but that was about it. It wasn’t until much later, around age 21, when I got really serious about skateboarding, that I picked yoga back up. I had been getting injured more and more often, always spraining my ankles, and later my wrists.
Getting Injured, Healing with Yoga
I decided it was time to try yoga after my sixth sprained ankle on my left leg. (I know, a little late to start.) Within a week of practicing a very simple yoga routine (modified sun salutations), I made a breakthrough in my skateboarding. I learned two very difficult tricks I had been trying to learn for three years.
I decided there might be something to this yoga stuff.
So I kept practicing, on and off. A few times a week here and there. I became more aware of what the “right” postures felt like, and pushed myself just a little bit more with every practice.
Fast forward three years, and my ankles don’t even bother me anymore. I’ve forgotten all about the trauma I had with them, and the last three month long sprain I had. Even when it’s cold out I don’t feel pain in my ankles. I owe it all to yoga.
Growing in Practice, Growing in Life
But in the process of doing this series of stretches, I have also grown internally. Even though I may only do the same sixteen or so postures, every time I do them there is a new difficulty. I can go as deep into my postures as I like, pushing just a little further past before with every session.
In practicing yoga, I have built up and inner strength and flexibility along with my body’s.
For instance, half moon is a pose I currently struggle with. It involves lifting your back leg up and twisting your body as you balance on one hand and one leg.
When I started my yoga practice, I couldn’t even dream of doing this sort of pose. It just required a level of concentration I couldn’t bring to my yoga, or to my life. And so I built up to it, and in doing so, built up the level of concentration I could bring to the rest of my life.
On the surface, yoga is only a series of postures to build strength, balance, and flexibility. In practice, however, these three virtues spill into every other area of your life. As you build strength and flexibility within your practice, so too does strength and flexibility enter the rest of your life.
Becoming Successful in Yoga
There is no such thing as being successful at yoga. There is no such thing as a “yoga master”. Everyone comes to their own practice and brings what they can. It is such an internal experience that we can’t even gauge our own progress against someone else. We must instead learn to measure and know what we are capable of ourselves, and judge from there.
When we push consistently, we can quickly master poses which were once impossible to even consider. In my own practice, I have built up a lot of ankle and wrist strength, incredible for me considering how much pain these pieces of my body previously gave to me.
So now I am proud to be able to do a wheel, and have a downward dog with my heels completely on the ground. Two poses very demanding for the wrist and ankles, respectively.
This shows just how completely relative “progress” is for every yoga practitioner. Someone may be excited for their balance progress, and another for their flexibility progress.
We all do the same postures, but we come at them in different ways. Each person has their own downward dog, their own plank, and their own upward dog. We just approximate the best our individual bodies know how. An overweight person and a body builder and an accomplished yogi all have their own personal versions of poses.
They are all right, as long as they are aware and being pushed.
Building a Lightheartedness
With a yoga practice there is a lightheartedness. Since there is nobody to compete against, nothing really to gain, we can just breathe and enjoy the stretch and sensation of movement. Yoga very quickly becomes a play after a certain level. It becomes a question of how far you can push, how open you can become, how focused on your breath you can stay.
And this play can’t help but spill over into the rest of your life. A happy yogi doesn’t go out into the world with his hands out, waiting for the world to give him what he feels he deserves. Instead, he looks to work and sacrifice as opportunities to build strength and flexibility within his own mind. Those poses which seemed impossible were anything but, just as the ideas and dreams of the mind are anything but.
The yoga practice starts out as a chore, but it eventually becomes an incredible blessing. To take a moment away from the busy life of worry and work; to simply breathe, stretch, and focus.
Slowly, steadily, the rest of life begins to reflect the purity of the practice, and the practice extends through the rest of your life.
