Mountains beyond mountain. Photo by Yannic Läderach on Unsplash
It started as a physical thing
I’ve been doing yoga on and off, regularly and irregularly, for a few years now. Like a lot of lads, I started because I was interested in the physical side of it: the stretching, the flexing, the strength training that wasn’t just doing tedious and repetitive movements in the gym – though I didn’t really understand just how physical it would be. I was also interested in the supposed benefits to mental health – though at the time, to be honest, I didn’t really understand what that meant either.
The poses felt uncomfortable – unnatural even – at first, but eventually I realised that I might have just been standing or sitting uncomfortably or unnaturally for much of my life. Days spent sitting at desks, in unnatural positions, doing unnatural work had the effect of pressing down on me after a few years. Maybe I’d still be there if I’d learned how to stand up straight, stayed flexible and breathed a bit. Too late now, I guess.
The stretching is a good place to start. Learn to open yourself up first. Not just football stretching. Movements and postures that open you right up and let a bit of air into you, in past your lungs and down through your stomach and hips. I didn’t know air went in that far. It’s cured many aches and pains in my body. Relieved stiffness in my legs, my lower back, my knees. “You’re just getting old,” or so they say. Maybe I listened to ‘them’ a bit too much. Not just in yoga classes – I spend half the day stretching now. I stretch out when I’m standing in the kitchen, or sitting on the couch. I stretch more than the cat.
Yoga is more than just stretching
It’s not all stretching though. You can target certain parts of your body that are obviously stiff or tense, but I also find that just spending some time going through a few poses can have the overall effect of lying in a hot bath. Just being more aware of your body and consciously moving it around – or lying or sitting and paying attention to how it feels – is a great thing to do. You mightn’t really know when you’re hot or cold, for example, until you’ve really listened to your skin. What? You mightn’t know a good rest until you’ve actively listened to your body lying still on the floor. Okay. Sometimes working on your strength relaxes you as well. Do something hard. Blow off a bit of steam. And sometimes working on relaxing makes you stronger.
I was curious about the mental side of the discipline as well, though I’m not sure I understood my mental health as well back then. What stress? Sure everything’s great. Why are you hunched forward with your shoulders all tense? I don’t know. “It’s just your genes,” or so they say. Them again. Well, open your body up and you might find out. Sometimes you’ve to move a bit to get your mind working. I’m not sure I really understood the extent of some of the anxieties and emotional baggage I was carrying around then. Stress might be associated with the mind – work, family, relationships, etc – but it’s equally in the body.
Ease the body to ease the mind, ease the mind to ease the body. Pay your rent on time to relax your shoulders. Tell yer man to piss off to unclench your jaw. Or open your hips to free your mind. Or maybe just stand and hold this uncomfortable position. Learn to stand around without crouching over your phone. Take your hands out of your pockets and look someone in the eye when you’re talking to them.
Just remember to breathe.
Learning how to breathe
Breathing is another good thing. In yoga? In general. It’s an easy thing to forget, or to get wrong. How could I forget to breathe? When I started out, every time they’d be telling me to breathe in, I’d be breathing out, and every time they’d be telling me to breathe out, I’d be breathing in. It felt so counter-intuitive. And when they’d tell the class “Remember to breathe” – I’d realise I’d been holding my breath for who knows how long. Who doesn’t know how to breathe? And then you learn how to really breathe: breathing deeply into your stomach while you’re holding a pose so your whole body inflates and straightens itself up from the inside out, like a crumpled-up Coke can being restored to its original, perfect, shiny red self. That’s how it feels to me anyway. Breathing is for more than your lungs.
A lot of people have told me “Oh I tried yoga but it’s too boring”. That’s what I thought of it for the first few months, years even. It’s the same with meditation. Running even. “Boring.” “I don’t have the time.” Whatever excuse you’re making for not doing it – that’s the reason you should do it. When my mind is telling me now that I “don’t have time” to do a few minutes of yoga – that’s when I know I know I could do with it most. “I found it a bit uncomfortable”, “It was too hard.” They’re the things you should do. Amazing how doing the thing you don’t have time for frees up the rest of your day. Try it.
It’s a good cure for boredom too. I wasn’t bored – what was actually happening was I was being forced to hold uncomfortable and challenging (but not unnatural) physical poses while I sweated my organs out through my skin – my whole soul out through my skin, perhaps.
And just hold it. And hold… And remember to breathe. Torture. I think things got worse before they got better. Like doing yoga exposed me to myself. I’d been doing a bit of running for a couple of years at this point – another thing that exposes you to yourself through ‘boring’ physical discomfort, often in the lashing rain – but this was a whole new level. Sweating holding a side plank or a downward dog, praying for the class to end. Sneaking a glance up at the clock: only another five minutes have passed; a minute later, I’d check again: I could swear the clock’s gone backwards.
Wishing my life away, in a class I’d signed up for and paid for and taken the time to go to and told everyone I was “loving”. In a room full of people, just me and my thoughts. Being forced to hold. But strangely compelling. “Remember to breathe” the teachers reminded me, until they were blue in the face. I kept going back. I started to actually enjoy the classes in the moment rather than just enjoying the satisfaction of having done them.
My breath started to sync up with the flow of the class. The whole practice got a lot easier: the physical stuff, the mental stuff, the other stuff. But then if it’s getting easier there’s always a bit further you can push yourself.
I stopped looking up at the clock.
Acceptance of discomfort
Acceptance of things is the first step to doing anything. Yoga won’t solve all your real-world problems, maybe none of them. But learning to acknowledge and accept uncomfortable thoughts is the first step towards dealing with them. A lot of them go away just through that. And yoga is great for making you sit or stand or lie or balance on one foot or plank – and sweat – and face what’s going on in your head. The physical challenge brings the mental to the fore. Same as any difficult task. We say we don’t like the thing but the thing usually just points out what you find difficult. At least if you’re digging a hole with a shovel you get a hole out of it; this is just you and yourself. Though you get a bit stronger, a bit more flexible, a bit more balanced.
It all sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t it? It is. Well, it depends on the person. Depends on why you’re doing it. It’s not all about pushing your limits or challenging your mental strength. Sometimes it’s nice to just take some time to do something good for yourself for its own sake. That’s why they thank you at the end just for showing up. I haven’t seen them give out any medals for headstands yet anyway.
What are your intentions? You set an intention at the start of each class. How are you feeling? Are you going to challenge yourself? Or ease back a little a bit? Both are important. What do you want to get out of your day, your week, your year, your life? If you set your intention, you’d be surprised how far it carries you, without thinking of it. If you don’t, you’d be surprised how your intentions get set for you, by you or by other people, without thinking about it. Don’t let it be other people. And even if it’s yourself… focusing on avoiding something can drag you towards it too, without realising it. Set your own intention, decide how you want to live. It can start by deciding how you want to practice yoga.
The best bit of wisdom I got from a yoga teacher – or at least the one that sticks with me to this day – was a question: “Who are you doing this for?” I’d heard the expression before, but that particular time and place stayed with me. Putting your back out cos you over-extended yourself trying to touch your toes; why’d you do that? Because someone else did it? Silly you. Do it for yourself. No-one’s making you do this. And no-one’s impressed by what you’re doing. Now that’s a good lesson to take from it. Don’t do things to impress people, or because someone else is doing it. Don’t mind what everyone else is at – you could put your back out. Don’t mind ‘them’.
Pity we don’t all have our own personal yoga teacher in our everyday lives, hanging around over our shoulders reminding us not to act the fool; it might prevent a lot of unnecessary embarrassment. It’s probably for the best: you’d never learn anything that way. You can’t have someone telling you everything. But you can always ask: “Who am I doing this for?” It’ll steer you right most of the time.
But you are your own teacher. You learn yoga under the (hopefully) trained supervision of someone who’s a bit more learned than you, but you put it into practice yourself. It’s the only way to learn. You don’t forget those things. Once learned in your body, your mind carries those lessons effortlessly. Accepting discomfort. Pushing yourself a little bit. Acknowledging your limitations. Understanding what’s going through your own mind and what you want to achieve. Just listening to yourself, and doing something on your own terms. The more you practice, the more you flow. All a bit vague sounding, but they’re the Big Ones: start with those and everything else gets easier.
Learning how to stand around
I find I’m more comfortable in myself nowadays. People use that phrase a lot. What does it mean? I’ve gotten benefits from meditation but it’s different. Yoga’s the one that taught me how to stand around. Mightn’t sound like a big deal but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Stand around anywhere without self-consciousness. Or embracing the self-consciousness. Without resorting to the phone.
Accepting whatever ‘they’ might say. Who cares? They’re not real anyway. But it’s no good practicing those things in a class if you’re not going to do them outside the class. And it’s no good standing around all the time. You know what you need to do. What’s that? It’s the thing that comes through your mind while your arms are rattling as you struggle to hold a plank or a downward dog. Sweating buckets. Just you and yourself, alone in a packed room. Strangely compelling. Maybe I just like boring things? I stretch out now in the queue at the shops. I might get some funny looks, I don’t mind. It’s good to get some funny looks sometimes.
Does having better physical balance make you a more balanced person, or make your life more balanced? Does opening up your heart chakra make you a more open person? I don’t know. They’d be hard things to measure. I’m not sure you’d even want to. But if you act like it does, it might – I’d say there’s a correlation between those who practice opening their hearts and balancing on one foot and those with open hearts and balanced lives.
Does practicing yoga make you a better person? Who knows. It might depend on what your intentions are. It’s not all about stress and mental health and ‘sorting yourself out’. It’s just a nice thing to do, isn’t it? Like going for a walk, or doing some gardening, or sitting in a chair out the back in the sun. It just depends on what you want out of it.
So don’t forget to ask: “Who am I doing this for?”
And remember to breathe.
If you liked this then try reading about the benefits of meditation:
Things I’ve Learned From Doing a Ten-Day Vipassana Meditation Retreat