“I want to take a few weeks off from yoga,” she told me, “it’s getting too hard and I leave each class hating myself and hating yoga.”
I looked at her tenderly and replied simply, “Please keep coming to class.”
Here’s what I said to her, more or less. In case you too, have ever felt like you want to “quit yoga.” I see you, you are not alone.
Yoga asana is hard work because we’re literally putting or body into shapes that ask us to use our physical capacity in new and different ways. We’re learning a new skill and we’re learning how to pay attention. We’re growing our respiratory system to be able to breathe more deeply. We’re aligning our bones for more optimal alignment. We’re using our physically body to access deeper layers of our being and bringing awareness into areas of our body that, for most of us, go unnoticed for our entire lives. We’re building our physical and psychology capacity to withstand higher charges of energy. We’re strengthening the muscles of our physical body and the muscles of our discriminating wisdom.
When yoga “get’s too hard” yes, it might mean that we need to take a break. Yet it also might mean we’re expecting too much of ourselves too soon.
As one of my yoga teachers, Christina Sell, said to me once, “Don’t let yoga ruin your life.” What I believe she meant by that is, Don’t let yoga get in the way of enjoying your life. Don’t let yoga add to your self-hatred narrative. Don’t let yoga be another reason to be sharp with yourself.
Yoga is hard work, it’s challenging by nature because it’s designed to bring stuff up. The purpose of yoga is to turn us toward ourselves and it’s up to us to cultivate the attitude loving-kindness first. Asana means “seat” but it also means “attitude.” What is the posture or attitude you take toward yourself? When we can meet our challenges face-to-face or even sideways, we learn that there’s no way through but to go through. Doing hard things is part of living. As my yoga teacher, Bhavani Maki, likes to say, “How we do one thing is how we do everything.”
Therefore, if my habitual tendency is to just go to bed when life gets hard it might be a useful experiment for me to try to stay awake, to sit, to wait, and to breathe. On the other side of the same coin of practice, if my tendency is to push harder when I’m faced with obstacles, then it might be more useful for me to approach with a little more humility and curiosity.
Like yoga, like life, there is not one “right” answer for everyone. It is an experiential education. Whatever way we engage the path and practice of yoga, one thing is important to remember that “quitting” is optional. Trust your inner knowing and it yoga is “getting too hard” perhaps it’s time for a different approach. In my experience if you really want it, it will never leave you alone if you do take a break. Yoga is always with you for “the practice of yoga and the experience of yoga are one in the same.” –Bhavani Maki, The Yogi’s Roadmap
Much of yoga teaches us how we sit with discomfort— do we wince or fidget? Do we muscle through? Do we immediately adjust and make ourselves for comfortable? Do we breath and know we will be through it soon and we won’t die?
I have gone through periods of time “shoulding” on myself for not doing yoga, berating myself because I couldn’t do the poses the way I thought I “should” be doing them. Yoga is challenging physically. The discipline works muscles I often didn’t even know I had. However, when I am able to hold myself tenderly and realize that I am learning new ways of being in relationship with myself and with the world, and when I can remember to entrust myself to the process of being peeled back by the teachings of yoga, I am able to discover and enjoy the delicate work of finding the ever-elusive balance between effort and surrender.
Thank you.
And please keep coming to class. Let us together find a new way of being connected to the life force within.