#yogaeveryday is not serving us, let’s just do some yoga
When I completed my yoga teacher training I was elated. I was proud of my achievement, I was eager to go out into the world and share my love for yoga, I felt that wonderful wave of possibility washing over me. Then I got home, and suffered the worst lull in motivation that I’ve ever experienced. Completing the training that was supposed to propel me into my new life as a yoga teacher had somehow switched off my motivation for yoga altogether.
In the 10 years since I attended my first yoga class, I’d genuinely never felt like I ‘should’ do yoga, only that I wanted to. Suddenly ‘should’ was all I could think of. I felt guilty that I wasn’t looking after myself, I chastised myself for the days when I wrote ‘yoga practice’ on my to do list and threw the list away with it un-checked, I started to wonder if I really wanted to be a yoga teacher. Was I a fraud?
These feelings freaked me out, but they also allowed me to tap into what I think is a very common perception of yoga, that it is something we ‘should’ be doing and we’ve somehow failed for not managing an asana practice #everydamnday. When I took a closer look at the way we talk about yoga in the west, the way it’s represented in the media, and the rise of the #instayogi, it was clear that through our genuine desire to encourage and inspire people to try yoga, we’re scaring a lot of them off.
In many ways we have moulded yoga to fit into our fitness culture. We run 1 hour long sessions in gyms and studios, they are primarily focused on the physical practice, perhaps with some breathing and meditation thrown in for good measure. Please don’t get me wrong, I think this model is brilliant and has been hugely successful for popularising yoga in the west – it is exactly this model that got me into yoga in the first place. However, this integration of yoga into our fitness culture has brought with it some troubling ideals.
An undeniably beautiful image, but is this helping more people try yoga?
Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash
Practicing #yogaeveryday, having a slim and tanned body, and folding yourself like a contortionist are among the ideals which now dominate our picture of what it means to be a yogi. Having the time for yoga every day is a luxury, having a slim and tanned body has nothing to do with how much yoga you practice, and being as bendy as a contortionist brings its own health challenges (trust me, I’m hypermobile). None of these ideals really show us what it means to practice yoga, and they’re alienating a huge population who would benefit deeply from it. I cannot tell you how many conversations have started with ‘I’m a yoga teacher’ and gone straight to ‘I should really do yoga but…’. It wasn’t until I had my own trouble with the dreaded ‘should’ that I really understood what this feels like.
In the depths of my motivational lull, I found myself clock watching while practicing at home, wanting to stop but carrying on so that I could say to myself I’d hit some arbitrary target of 1 hour’s practice. Where does 1 hour come from? It couldn’t really be more arbitrary. I was attaching so much self-worth to the amount of time I spent practicing, even if I wasn’t remotely focused, or getting much benefit, just going through the motions. I eventually realised that this kind of practice was not serving me, I needed to be kinder to myself, and I needed to accept where I was. These are two crucial aspects of yoga philosophy, so they should be just as important as my physical practice.
6.5M posts for #yogaeveryday on Instagram, are these images encouraging people to try yoga?
I could have been really kind to myself and allowed myself not to go to my mat at all, just to let myself off the hook. But that wouldn’t have served me either. I needed to push myself too, I needed to work hard, because hard-work is just as much a yogic idea as the ideas of not-harming yourself and accepting where you are.
In the end, I stripped it right back, allowing myself to celebrate if I did 5 simple sun salutations in the morning or after work. Most days, once I’d done 5 sun salutes I was warmed up and focused and carried on for another 10 minutes, or even another 40. But that didn’t matter, because the plan to just do some yoga, without judgement, is what got me to my mat.
A few months later, my home asana practice is still patchy, but I’ve learned to accept where I am. Some days I’ll have a fantastic hour long session, other days I lie on a bolster and breathe for 5 minutes, either way I’ve done some yoga. Either way, my physical and mental health will be better for it.
There is not a single person I know who couldn’t find some benefit from yoga. Yet most people I know are held back from giving it a try by the idea that they need to be flexible, strong, fit, skinny, or spend lots of time on it. I want to break down these barriers and help everyone find just a corner of their wellbeing to polish with a little bit of yoga. Because everyone is good enough for some yoga.