What is yoga? Who is it for?

The answer is not a bunch of people sat around chanting OM with mandalas tattooed on their arms and wearing hemp genie pants, who could touch the their toes since they were birthed and only eat raw organic food. 

Far from it. There may be a few of them at some of the classes you find across the world of course, but by and large, yogis are just normal people. It is for everyone.

Normal people of every body type and fitness level, of every age, race, gender, religion, and political disposition, from every background and occupation. Many can't do many things when they start, but are delighted week by week as they notice the changes happening in response to what they are doing. Saying we are too inflexible to do yoga is like saying we're too smelly to have a shower really!

On a physical level, yoga is inclusive because there are numerous disciplines and even more numerous teachers, which means there is a style for everyone. Or a few styles. And there are always options in every pose and every class and indeed every moment. 

We learn to listen to the wisdom of our body and get our attention out of our mind long enough to hear it. It's a beautiful feeling becoming aware of your body changing, feeling more alive, more strong, more mobile, more resilient and lived in. 

Over time, as we ease and strengthen the body, we affect our energy, or our mood, and we feel more balanced and light within our bodies and emotions. 

The mind feels lighter and problems feel less heavy, they don't stop happening, but our reaction to them begins to change. 

We notice the discomfort, just as we do in our yoga practice, and respond to it with equanimity and calmness rather than an emotional reaction of frustration and despair. 

Because we don't just learn to balance on one foot, we learn how to navigate stress and embrace it, to alchemise it and go through it with ease and calmness. To find balance inside no matter how turbulent the ocean currents that we are navigating in our lives. 

So that what we learn on the mat starts to infiltrate how we perceive and live our life. 

So what is Yoga? It is far more than physical movement. Some classes will make you sweat, ache the next day, and become fit as hell far more than most exercise classes, and other classes are so deeply relaxing you'll fall asleep before you even get to Shavasana, the lovely lying down rest pose at the end of all classes! 

The confusion about what Yoga is largely due to the fact that Yoga is simply union, in a philosophical sense between our individual consciousness or witness watching everything unfold, and the universal consciousness that we are all part of. Just as each wave is individual and defined, and yet still connected to the ocean from which each arises from and dissolves back into.

And the tools of yoga to take us back to this place are so diverse and varied that Yoga means many things to many different people. But it is more a collection of techniques within a philosophy than a physical practice. The physical practice, or asana, is often how we find and get into Yoga. But the deeper you go into your practice and learn to let go of all your expectations and attachments, what you're holding onto tightly, and all your resistance to what is, the more the magic of Yoga and it's greatest calming act of the mind begin to unveil themselves.

Really, we could say it is a practice of learning to love, accept, forgive, and embrace ourselves. And therefore everyone and everything. Because we're all connected to that same vast ocean of consciousness. 

And if we get super fit and toned along the way and suddenly hear our body craving healthier foods and a good nights sleep because we're suddenly living more in the body and aware of what feels good and doesn't, well that's just a lovely little bonus of (as the yogis say), making the body light and strong like the body of the lion, the perfect vehicle on the way to Yoga, union.