Many yoga practitioners feel unhappy or criticize themselves when they don’t practice every day. I experienced the same feeling, thinking things like “I didn’t go on the mat today, I don’t feel good about myself.” But thinking about what “practice” really means can help us comprehend how our everyday decisions can affect our yoga practice, and help us feel better about our practice too.
What does it mean to practice yoga? When yoga practitioners complain that they haven’t had time to finish their asana practice, they typically speak specifically of the physical practice, or asana.
But it’s only recently that yoga has been conceptualized as a asana practice.
The old, premodern interpretation of yoga takes into account many aspects of the human experience. Yoga has long been thought of as more than just an asana practice; it is a life practice.
But the idea that yoga is an asana practice is relatively recent.
Because of this, all of the most significant writings contain guidance on matters such as diet, rest, physical activity, and other facets of daily life and the decisions that each of us makes.
Yoga is about your entire day; it’s not only about what you do on the mat or with your body.
Our perspective radically shifts if we begin to understand yoga as an ongoing life journey instead of merely an hour-long asana practice. At this moment, we stop practicing the poses and start to become yoga, incorporating all of our daily decisions into our practice.
Obviously, an ongoing asana practice is essential and is how many individuals firstly discovered yoga. If yoga is limited to asana practice alone, on the other hand, it could make a practitioner feel bad about missing their daily practice hour. Let’s expand the scope of our “practice” and decrease the expectations we have of ourselves as practitioners. Let’s integrate our yoga practice into our daily lives: yoga is a result of our daily decisions about our diet, our actions, the amount of time we spend with others and ourselves, and our acts of love.
Think of living as a yoga practice that you engage in. Proceed gradually and slowly, keep learning as much as you can, and enjoy the flow itself.
