Not Really My Style
/There are so many ways we can practice yoga and so many variations of asana. Asana is just one of the eight limbs of yoga and even though it’s the most popular in the western world, it’s the third on the list after yama and niyama. We’ll get to those another day! Did a quick google search and found a list with 14 styles of yoga and Sri Dharma Mittra photographed himself doing 1350 asana postures. My point is there are a lot of ways you can practice yoga.
I recently visited a friend in Boulder and we went to a Baptiste style class. I’ve done Baptiste before but have been so used to vinyasa classes the past few years I forgot what other styles felt like! I did my training at Laughing Lotus where they encourage you to move freely, dance, throw glitter around, and fly into handstand when you’d like. This Boulder class was hard! It was slow, we stayed still, we focused on every inhale and exhale, we sweat, we went deep, we were in it. I left saying “eh. Not really my style.” What?! What does that even mean?? Later, my friend share more about the studio and brought up transformation. I thought that this all sounded very familiar. Transformation. I learned in my training that we ALL come to yoga for some sort of transformation. To move away from suffering. To go deeper within. For self discovery. Through asana we are able to connect to our breath. We are able to clear out the clutter in the mind and transform. In The Heart of Yoga Desikachar says, “We have described yoga s a movement from one point to another, higher one that was previously beyond our reach. It doesn’t matter whether this shift comes about through practicing asanas, through study and reading, or through meditation—it is still yoga."
It doesn’t matter what style you do. We are all working toward this transformation and the yoga teacher is just a guide to hold space and lead you toward that self discovery. So maybe Baptiste style is what helps my friend get to that feeling of samadhi. Maybe getting lost in a vinyasa flow is how I dig deep and connect to the true self. Maybe my friend is holding warrior 2 for five breaths longer than me but that intention is all the same. Yoga does translate to union right?
“Yoga is not passive. We have to participate in life. To do this well we can work on ourselves”
