Yoga & Resilience Beyond Self-Improvement
So many students of Yoga and Tantra that I have worked with over the years ask the same question. When does this work? When does my life get easier? When do I change into the person I want to be?
There is a myth in the Yoga “industry” that at the completion of a Yoga training (or even after a class or two) our lives will magically improve. When we come to Yoga to “be a better person,” we are engaging with a dangerous motivation. We start to invest in a false ideal that we will stop being who we are when we are doing Yoga. So many hope that Yoga will make us more than human, that it will take away our heartbreaks, our stresses, our frustrations, our anxieties and overwhelm. That it will change our bodies to look like an IG influencer, and it will take away our reactivity, our frustration, our disappointment. Damn, that’s a lot to expect. When we find that after months of training and practice, we are still the same person, we are often disappointed and angry, or silently ashamed that we aren’t doing it right.
First, it is important to note that if we are truly practicing Yoga, it doesn’t make us more than human, it makes us more of the human we are. The point of Yoga is to “yoke” us to our lives, lives that from a Tantric point of view are gifts from the Divine Source, not burdens to carry. The practices of Yoga are designed to help us get clear about all of the things we are NOT, so that we can more fully be what we are. This is different from what so many of us seek from our Yoga practices. We come to our mats hoping to transcend or escape our worldly mess, and find a way to float above our difficulties (I’ve written about this a ton, check out my library of rants). If we are really practicing Yoga, it is allowing us to turn toward these difficulties, this “mess,” seek ourselves in it, then decide (Viveka in Sanskrit) how to respond from the source of our being.
Secondly, because this is the way Yoga works, it can’t be transformational if it is explored as a practice of convenience. It must be embarked upon as a discipline. Yoga has always been a discipline, a call to be devoted to the path of learning and self discovery (not self improvement).
Yoga practice doesn’t happen “when you have the time,” and it isn’t a luxury. Quite the opposite, actually. Yoga is something you commit to, regardless of the distractions and difficulty of life. If you are a true practitioner of Yoga, you are NEVER too busy to practice.
When we make Yoga synonymous with Resilience, then we recognize that it is a detriment to wait until the dust settles to engage. Just like resilience is a way we engage with and respond to hardship, Yoga is a way we engage with and respond to life. When we are practicing, we are not removing ourselves from our challenges, our obstacles, or our joys, instead, we are choosing to fully engage with them. We bring our conscious awareness to all the bits, and then we move from the deep core of knowing inside. This skillset is one that is cultivated in every experience, not just on Thursdays at 6:00.
If you are wanting Yoga to improve your world or if you are wanting to be more resilient in your life, then it might be time to change the perspective of your practice. The word discipline comes from the Latin meaning "instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge," and its root is the word disciple, which means "pupil, student, follower.” Yoga was never meant to serve you, it was meant to be served by You. And the result of that service is an expansive life, more capacity, more possibility. If you are practicing Yoga as it is meant to be practiced, you are in service to it.
Vira Bhava Yoga, AUGUST 16, 2022
