What Yoga is Not

I used to be guilty of sharing this kind of photos on Instagram too

There are many issues around how the modern world portrays yoga, which in turns affect how people perceive it. As yoga is misperceived, the modern yoga world is filled with the wrong audience who do not have their expectation quite right. Then, studios and teachers need to twist the tradition of yoga even further to meet the expectation; thus, it becomes a negative feedback cycle. I am in a constant battle between maintaining an indifference to what other people think or do, and telling people what I believe yoga is and is not. On one hand, I think people are free think and do whatever they want, as long as I know what my practice is. On the other hand, as I am receiving this beautiful gift of the world, being yoga, which ameliorates so much of the suffering that human beings experience everyday, I feel the urge to share, to spread and shout "Look! This is the path most of you guys are looking for! Look here!" to the crowd. When I see a person whom yoga is probably the best for have a misunderstanding of yoga and therefore decided not to try, I feel very upset about the loss of opportunity. I think a blog post is a good start to settle this constant battle I have.

The purpose here is to show what yoga is not. For this purpose, although yoga is so many things, it is worth to put out a one-liner definition of yoga in order for you to better understand why yoga is not the things which I will write about next:

Yoga is the training of the mind through the training of the body.

Yoga is not stretching. People do stretching for many reasons: it is part of their workout routine; they stretch to become more flexible; or they just want to have a few stretches to relax. That is fine. There is nothing wrong with stretching, but stretching is not yoga and yoga is not stretching. This misconception is problematic for two reasons. One, it prevents people from learning the tradition of yoga because they already think that they are doing yoga while all they are doing is just stretching. Second, it prevents people who do not like stretching from trying yoga. There are so many entry points to yoga. People who want to build strength can enter by doing a more strength-oriented practice. People who have trouble breathing can enter by doing a breathing practice. Again, stretching is not yoga and yoga is not stretching.

Yoga does not take place on the beach. There are so many fantasized images of a yoga practice looks like. There is one particular setup that I hear over and over again, which I cannot even wrap my head around what the source of this idea is. Somehow, people think that yogis practice on the beach in the morning, facing the sun, nice and relaxed. There are just so many things wrong with this setup. First of all, sand is an awful foundation for your practice, let alone how dirty it will make your mat. You want a solid and stable foundation that can support your weight and counter-act the forces you put on the mat/ground. You do not want wobbly or unstable sand which you will just sink into in your chaturanga (a yoga pushup) and you will just slip a lot when you move your feet. Second of all, there are just so many issues with being outside. I had practiced outside when I had no other choices but I can tell you, it is not the most pleasant thing. The wind can blow off your mat and even you. Flies, mosquitoes and bugs are distractions unless you are a very tuned-in and advanced practitioner. The weather can change during the practice especially if you have a long one. It happened to me before when it started raining in the middle of my practice. Finally, facing and/or being under the sun. You just get sunburned. Period. There are many open shalas that allow practitioners to feel more connected with nature, but they were specifically designed and built. For most regular practitioners, you want to be indoor with natural light. A big enough space without distractions.

Yoga is simple but not easy. People often confuse the concept of simplicity and difficulty. Yoga studios and instructors want to market a product that offers challenges, mostly physical ones. Yoga by itself is simple, thus looks boring and not challenging. To compensate that, they bundle yoga with all these other things to make the whole thing super complex. Nowadays, you have all these classes that are half-yoga and half other things like pilates, cardio, calisthenics and dancing. It poses the same problem: people think that they are doing yoga but they are not. They can at best achieve the training of the body. Pilates, cardio, calisthenics and dancing are fine in and of themselves. They can definitely improve your body and are fun for some people, but they obscure the yoga part, which aims at the training of the mind. Yoga is difficult because the mind is difficult.

Yoga is not magic. Yoga is peace but not relaxing. Just like everything else, if you want to get something, you need to put in the work to get it. This is the difference between magic and non-magic. I have used the word "training" twice in my one-liner definition of yoga, so yoga is no magic. If you want to be a lawyer and you wake up one day with all the knowledge of the practice of law, that is magic. If you study, pass the bar and become a lawyer, that is not magic. Yoga is not much different. Many people somehow think that they can just lie around casually on their mats, maybe do a few stretches here and there, or follow this 10-minute YouTube video, they will become very flexible, slim and mindful. Sure, you can, but you need to stretch deeply to become flexible, you need to do all the chaturangas and jump-backs to become slim and you need to practice mindfulness to become mindful! Not just social media but the media should take some of the blame. While yoga practitioners know that the ease and calmness on the face is essential to sustain the flow of the practice and to peace, to outsiders, it seems like these yogis are relaxing, which cannot be further from the truth. Unfortunately, when travel and retreat programs and yogis put on photos or videos of yoga in various marketing outlets and social media, whether intentionally or not, they lead to a wide-spread mis-interpretation of how one feels during a yoga practice.

I have read a few books of Buddhism, mindfulness and yoga. Incidentally, when many authors try to explain or define something of great complexity, for example, Buddhism, they humbly admit that they cannot provide a satisfying answer that is all-encompassing, but they will try their best. One thing they do often though is by telling what that something is not, which I still found eye-opening and useful. Throwing out all the junk surely is a good first step towards the truth. Similar to these authors, I want you to be more open to learn about what yoga is on your own by telling what it is not.