How long will we keep accumulating knowledge without implementing it? I am saying this exclusively in the context of yoga. All of us primarily agree that yoga is good. But when it comes to its practice, we fail to do it consistently. A weekly class qualifies us to be called yoga practitioners, a 200-, 300- or 500-hour certificate qualifies us to be called yoga teachers.
Look Beyond Certificates
A yoga practitioner is one who is never off the mat. Yoga doesn’t end when the class does. A yoga teacher is one who soaks in this knowledge and remains immersed in its limitless depths. Every moment is a revelation that adds to the yoga teacher's experience. The guide is known by their guidance, not by a certificate.
Evolution Comes from Consistency
How you are today is the result of your consistent practice in the past. Hence, you do your yoga in the present knowing that your future will be shaped by it. Simply talking about starting a yoga practice will not contribute to your evolution.
Yoga Is a Unique Alchemy
When I began my practice, I was very drawn to teachers who would give me the logic and reasons behind the yoga being taught. But years of practice and teaching has shown me its futility. Come to think of it, my experience didn’t quite correlate to what was being told. Yoga is a unique alchemy. When I sat quietly to think of what I had practiced and experienced before, during and after, I was quite amazed.
Yoga Is Where Expectations Are Not
I always went into my practice with multiple expectations, seeking results. In doing so I was never present in the practice. I was practicing in anticipation of what it would bring. Just like how we live any other part of life, always ahead of the moment we are in at that point. I wish I had practiced without any expectation or condition.
Yoga Is a Defining Journey
I completely forgot that I was a passenger in the vehicle of my practice, whose driver was yoga. I was practicing a frantic form of backseat driving without having any knowledge of the path, direction, or understanding of the vehicle. I was coming in the way of my own journey; and I made my journey hell. And who did I blame? The driver, of course.
It is not the same attitude with which you turn to medicine. You have the patience to wait 30 minutes when you swallow a pill. Medication is not subject to the same analysis which yoga attracts. No such investigation is done, a doctor’s prescription is blindly implemented. But with yoga, the prescription is written by you, and it has to followed through with the desired results in the time allocated by you, or else it is questioned all the way to its roots.
In Witnessing Lies the Journey of Yog
Yoga does its work, regardless of how many yays or nays come its way. Our job is to be an observer and witness the knowledge and experience that it is growing within you. It need not be debated, discussed, or revealed. It is a knowledge which is relevant only to you and the experience exclusive to your transformation.
