What is Yoga?

this is NOT yoga

“You don’t do yoga, yoga happens to you.” — Sharath Jois

Like falling in love.

And like love, yoga’s not easy. But, I’ll tell ya what, yoga’s certainly not crazy circus tricks, astonishing acts of contortion, or spandex clad group fitness classes where you’ll be encouraged to blossom your heart. Or your buttocks. (You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff I’ve heard!)

Getting your leg behind your head isn’t yoga. 

Don’t be scared off, yoga’s way deeper… and way cooler.

Let’s get away from what yoga isn’t and get to what yoga is

For clear a nice, definition of Yoga, I always err to the Yoga Sutras. Written by Patanjali a few thousand years ago, the underlying assumption of this seminal text is that the true state of human spirit is freedom, and that yogic practices brings us back to it.

The rub here is that we get all caught up. We start to identify with the world around us, defining ourselves by our bullshit. Our addictions. Our emotional baggage. Our physical baggage . Our attachments.

This is super problematic, because the self is totally not that: it’s in fact the opposite of that. Our true self isn’t our bullshit, it’s  freedom from our bullshit. But that’s still not a definition of yoga, huh?

Don’t worry, unlike me, the  The Yoga Sutras  handle all of this right off the bat.

First they tell you that “This is the teaching of yoga” in Sutra 1.1– throwing their clout around, makin’ sure you know that they’re the authority and,  and then BAM! They immediately follow with a definition. Sutra 1.2: “Yoga is the cessation of the fluxuations of the mind.”

Why do we need the mind to calm the heck down? So we can be observers to the world, seeing things clearly without prejudice. Thoughts are composites of our mind, our  intelligence, and our ego– all of which are created as reflections of stuff from outside the self. AKA: our bullshit.

When we’re free from our bullshit,  we’re doing yoga.

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