What is Yoga?

Oct 24

More than just asana

Yoga has become an ever expanding mainstay of modern life. In any decent sized town from coast to coast you’re bound to find at least one studio, and then there is the ubiquitous presence of brands like Lululemon, and the way Yoga is credited in the fitness routines of athletes and celebrities. But somewhere in this accelerating interest, the West seems to have honed in on one aspect of Yoga and one only– and that’s the physical practice called asana.

Asana is absolutely an integral part of Yoga– but leaving Yoga just at that would be a little bit like looking only at the state of California and calling it America. You wouldn’t be wrong, as California is America… but America isn’t just California. And assuming it is would be to miss the other 49 states and all the unique qualities and values they bring to the table, which form the whole.

The “states” of Yoga are known as the “limbs”, and there are 8 of them– asana and maybe a couple others you’ve heard of such as meditation and breathwork. But broader and more abstract quantities too like truth, moderation, contentment, and surrender. The whole in this case forming what the ancient yogis considered the path to enlightenment. From my understanding, asana was brought into the mix for a few reasons– one would be in reverence to the importance of the annamaya kosha, or the outermost covering of the soul. The koshas are a Yogic system of understanding energy where there are believed to be 5 layers covering the soul, and you need to transcend each of them. Making asana rather important to kickstarting that process. Asana was also created to help practitioners sit for long periods of time without discomfort, so they could advance their meditation practices.

But all of that being said– what has been my experience with knowing this broad definition of Yoga and why do I believe it’s important we consider Yoga’s original aims?

I came to Yoga seeking relief from chronic pain– I actually googled “Yoga for scoliosis” and wound up in an Iyengar studio in Chicago. I stayed in the scoliosis specific class for probably a year, and it was wonderful and helped me immensely. But it was definitely a body centric entrance into Yoga and I adopted a bit of a belief that that’s all I was working on. As I continued on as a student and advanced to other classes, I knew I was feeling so much better not just in my physical body but also in terms of my anxiety and burn out from my career in advertising. Still, I would have told you it was largely about the physical poses, as I didn’t entirely understand the higher realms I was entering into and what Yoga as a whole meant. It wasn’t until I moved to Wyoming years later that I actually learned asana and Yoga weren’t synonymous. I’d been doing graphic design for a Yoga studio here and had been invited to the holiday party. We were going around the circle and sharing ideas we had for making the studio better– and I remember someone said “I’d love to bring in more of the other limbs”.

Maybe it was embarrassing that it took me years of being a dedicated practitioner to entirely consider the scope of Yoga. I feel vastly more familiar today after extensive trainings including my 500 hour certification (I’ll be done by the end of the year!) where I’ve completed another 300 hours of training that were almost exclusively focused on the other limbs rather than asana. But I tell this story to lend my understanding that it can be confounding to get a real grasp of Yoga in the West. Even great teachers and studios tend to focus on asana. It’s also worth considering that Yoga is still very new over here– most credit Swami Vivekananda with bringing Yoga to the World’s Fair in Chicago, and that was only in 1893. We’re basically talking about only a hundred some years of Yoga in America. And of course it’s grown at a rapid pace and bent and molded to adapt to modern life. Some folks might fault all the trends we’ve seen like Hot Yoga or Sculpt, I’ve heard others say that America now has the strongest asana teachers in the world.

Whatever your perception, I believe it really matters that we take time to pause and consider what this whole practice is for. Is it for helping the physical body? Absolutely, that is the only way I ever found Yoga and I still practice every day with that intention. But is it also designed to lead us to even greater aspirations? Yes. To me that is massively inspiring, and I’d never want to settle for the opening credits once I discovered I could watch the whole movie. It’s my utmost aim to infuse as much of that loftier magic into my teaching as I can, so that we push ourselves to our greatest evolution and potential. Yoga, and you, can be so much more.