All The Difference

Since I opened my shala, these days my classes consist of many beginner students who come to consult me on the many shifts they are feeling in their bodies as the practice begins to integrate into their lives. I am forever grateful for my own experiences with these changes; They have given me the tools to address my students’ questions from a personal experience. There is never a correct answer to these types of “lifestyle” questions, but it always helps to know that there was someone else who felt and experienced the same things as you.

I look back to when I began experiencing these changes in my own life and remember it was both an uncomfortable and beautiful time. I was creating new habits and finding which older habits no longer served me. To the new practitioner, as you begin your journey, you will realize that your habits begin to shift. Suddenly your priorities are different and the practice makes you look at things like what you eat, your quality of sleep, and who you spend your time with.

A lot of the time the things that come up as you begin to practice the Ashtanga Yoga Method are difficult and confrontational. You need to want the benefits of the yoga practice enough to be willing to deal with the pain and struggle of change. I began to practice Ashtanga Yoga as a university student and it was a very difficult time. Every day in my practice I would struggle with finding a balance between what was “socially acceptable” and what I truly wanted. I needed to have this time of conflict and struggle to know that in the end I was willing to dedicate myself to this path at this level. It wasn’t until I moved to Thailand that I was able to let go of all of the outside pressure from others: Eating unhealthy food, partying, sleeping late, and being friends with people who deeply did not share the same values as me. It was easier to drop old habits once in this new environment because I did not know anyone. I could restructure my life to be the way I wanted it to be.

To those who already have well established lives, you don’t need to leave your life behind and renunciate the world in order to practice yoga. But you need to observe the day-to-day changes that are happening in your body and ask yourself which direction you would like to go. This observation is like the poem by Robert Frost “The Road Not Taken.” Each day as we commit to practicing yoga, we can allow the practice to change our bodies and minds towards the direction of pureness and clarity, or we can press snooze and go back to bed. “The Road Not Taken” depicts two roads that the traveler must choose between. He takes some time looking at both roads and eventually chooses the road “less traveled by” which in the end he says “made all the difference.” I often think of our practice in this way. It is absolutely the road less taken. We live in a world that asks us to numb our feelings and run from place to place without any clarity. But our practice asks us to wake up and see what is in front of us.

In practicing Ashtanga Yoga, we are lucky to now have a network of those who have come before and have experienced the same struggle as us. They can advise us on how to move forward and help eliminate any fear or doubt. From my own experience, eating and sleeping well is so important for our practice;These days it is now like second nature to me. But it didn’t happen over night. After only a few months of practicing yoga I felt a sense in my body that I could no longer eat meat. I felt the heaviness and pain that it caused my body, so I followed this feeling and gave it up. Next came dairy. Dairy never agreed with me as a child, but I would force myself to eat it because it’s what I saw my peers doing. After some time of practicing, I also gave this up. My body slowly became lighter and felt more free. Then later as my practice became more intense, timing of meals also became more important. The process of change was about finding a routine in general. Especially these days, when I’m teaching, I feel the importance of sleeping well for recovery.

The most challenging and confronting thing for me was to filter the people I accepted into my life. As a child I was always naïve and wanted to be friends with everyone. But the harsh reality of life is we cannot equally let people in to the same level. We need to protect our own energy to a certain extent and feel okay to spend time alone. The more time I practiced, the stronger I became and the easier it was for me to draw boundaries in who I would accept into my private life. These days I have a very small circle of close friends and feel okay to spend time alone. The more I practiced and looked at myself, I was able to see who had the same values as me. I could feel if I was energized after spending time with someone or exhausted. I was able to listen to the signals and see.

I began practicing Ashtanga Yoga at eighteen years old, a time when especially as young girls we are highly insecure. The practice showed me a world beyond my looks and helped me realize the only way to do this practice was to look deep inside. If I found that a certain posture was difficult for me, I knew that there was some blockage.The reason for blockages was always something deep inside my mind that may have come from my personal past history. There was no way I could hold onto my own insecurity and work on this act of purification at the same time. So I chose to “be ugly” and get to work. I saw some of the darkest parts of my own mind, but in seeing them and bringing them into awareness, they no longer were able to control the actions of my day-to-day life. Yoga and building confidence go hand-in-hand and it is especially why I find it so important for women to practice yoga. We live in a world where many women must compete with each other, but I have noticed this dynamic shift in the shala. Through practice, I have witnessed a beautiful community of friends who support each others’ goals to come practice and grow together. There is no competition, but only pride in seeing each other’s achievements.The story of learning to build confidence through practicing yoga, will be resumed in another post. It is something that happens little-by-little through committed practice.

I will leave you with the Robert Frost Poem Below:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Frost, R. (1916). The Road Not Taken.