Simply Yoga

I remember the first time I found out there were different ways of practicing the system of yoga. Before that I thought it was all the same. I had heard of Iyengar, Satchidananda, Sivananda, and, of course, Rodney Yee (the prolific yoga DVD creator that he is). I knew what Hatha meant. I did not know that there were actually some great differences in approaches, let alone something called flow yoga or power yoga. I don’t believe the local Chapter’s had its yoga section yet.

During my first year of college, I signed up for a free meditation class. While there I was approached by an older couple, obviously excited to see a fresh, young face, and asked how I came to be there. I told them I practiced yoga and wanted to try a meditation group. Their faces lit up (this was just on the cusp of yoga’s explosion of popularity--I think Madonna had already been on Oprah doing her asanas, but this city was still a bit behind, as Nova Scotia often is). They asked me, “What kind of yoga do you practice?” There are kinds?!!! I thought. I panicked, never being one who was comfortable with looking stupid. I mumbled something along the lines of, “I don’t know . . . regular yoga,” and got away from them as fast as I could.

It was after that experience that I started to seek out books on yoga and began to study it. Things started to get complicated. Being in college at the time, however, I had to put yoga study on hold for the most part. But after college, during the last few years, I’ve felt I had to amass as much knowledge as possible about the system of yoga, despite the fact that I can never remember the Sanskrit names. I thought if I was going to teach I had to know everything or else I would be false, a fake. I think I was happier with my yoga practice when it was simply just yoga and being with the breath. I’ve began to remove the pressure I placed on myself to get back to that place. When I say I’m taking a break from yoga, I don’t mean that I’m not practicing and trying to “live” it, but trying to be less intellectual with it—it was taking up too much brain space (and god knows, I ain’t got much of that!). I just don’t want yoga to be an obsession (although I suppose people would be a lot less interesting without their various obsessions).

P.S. I never went back to that meditation group. They were a bit weird.

(Text Copyright: Graceful Yoga and Simplicity, 2009)