New Years Resolution: UN-do Your Idea of a Disciplined Yoga Practice

Most of my readers come from cultures where discipline is revered yet feared. If you look up the word in the dictionary, it’s no surprise why:

dis·ci·pline/ˈdisəplən/ Training people to obey. Punishing those who disobey.

People with discipline are looked at in awe, ‘What willpower you have.’ However, those with discipline have an intimate relationship with the dangers of it. You read right. Look at the Olympic gymnasts and swimmers like Michael Phelps.

I can’t compare myself to them. I can say I have trained in techniques that celebrate discipline with almost dictatorial vigor at a very young age. I became a master at taking what felt like blows and daggers of correction and criticism from myself and o†hers without ever noticing the scars, until they surfaced and threatened to destroy me.

I read in one of BKS Iyengar’s books (I want to say it was the Tree of Life, bu† I’ve yet to locate it again) that his guru Krishnamacharya used a phrase like: ‘Let the yoga do the yoga’. That phrase coupled with ‘faith’ so eloquently explained in Patricia Walden’s infamous Taking the Next Step: Faith and the Yoga Vitamins blog are what I’d like to see shape the yoga of 2019.

Over the course of a hiatus from studio life, I worked to UN-do my idea of discipline. My mentor, Kquvien DeWeese, supported my efforts by being there for me and meeting me where I was without judgment. She helped me learn to stop judging myself. She told me there are all kinds of yoga. It doesn’t have to be a class.

Do yoga. Whatever way works for you. Start with a single pose - a pose that gives you joy. Become the pose. Let the pose become you, and you will be doing more yoga than you imagine. Have faith that whatever small part of yoga you bring into your life will take hold and light the way forward.

~Namaste