Are we really experiencing the taste of Yoga ?
Modern world becomes more health conscious than past and yoga is one of the most popular medium for maintaining healthy life. There are thousands of teachers, traditions, Institutes, companies and religious schools trying to spread or teach yoga to the society. The main question I always ask myself, are yoga practitioner or students really experiencing or getting taste of yoga? Even as a teacher, are we really imparting relevant and practical yoga to the students? There are people who do yoga regularly with discipline, some people do it with some purpose as a therapy or to learn advance postures. Some do it casually and some do according to their choice of preference with their fixed ideas. Teachers also teaching according to their training and learning. Some teachers are strictly following their tradition, some focus more on teaching advance postures, some or in fact most of the teachers teach according to the demand of the students, some teachers modified the practices according to the need. The important point is with all these various styles, schools, choices, preconditioning and insecurity among the teachers for losing students or their job, are helping society to get the benefits from Yoga ?
Any theory, philosophy, concept, system or tradition has to evolve to be relevant and effective but it should not change the core and main message or soul of the system. Just to look different from others due to ego, teachers and traditions totally change the core of the Yoga teachings and it creates confusion among the practitioners and become just mere exercise having some physical benefits. Yoga practitioners are satisfied or happy with their yoga practice regardless they are practicing Asana or Pranayama or Meditation only as we know doing something is better than nothing. Most of the practitioners leave yoga as they feel it is not helping them as per their expectation. In both cases the practitioners are hardly experiencing the real taste of yoga.
In my opinion one the the main problem started due to separating yoga classes into a beginner, intermediate or advance. Generally people think advance physical postures are advance yoga and more beneficial. Once they start doing any posture easily then they shift to other postures. They do not have interest to do Asanas with comfort, although we only get benefit from the Asanas when it is comfortable.
Even those who are only practicing Pranayama or Meditation, starts having higher expectation, which is not right approach. Yoga needs patience and gradual progress to go from one level to next. Once we starts fixing target or expectation then we never experience the real taste of yoga. This is one of the reason people are moving from one teacher to another or one tradition to other and after some time people leave yoga out of frustration. Below is the few mistakes I observe, people are doing --
1. Those who only practice Asanas think that they are advance yogi. They feel good to challenge themselves and trying only advance postures. They trapped in their own ego and never experience the real benefit of yoga. There is nothing wrong to try advance pose but we have to see whether it is relevant or not. By doing these practices if we still having physical, mental, emotional illness then it is useless to do yoga. Flexibility is not guarantee for the good health.
2. Those who are practicing only Pranayama and meditation only are ignoring the relevance of our body. Without making our body and it's system comfortable and balance, we can not progress properly in the yogic sadhana. Theses people are also egoist and set high expectation.
3. Those people, who are using props like stripes, blocks, cushions etc continuously focuses more on feel good in each movement, which is also not correct approach for everyone, unless you have any severe injuries. I always see people using props unnecessary because teachers instruct them and scold them to use props for safety. So most of the people struck in same pose and they never progress. Feeling comfortable and relax doesn't means that you shouldn't make an effort to improve. Comfort only comes with regular and gradual effort.
So my opinion is that practitioners should starts with the basic and stick to it. Yoga Practice should be combination of Asanas, Pranayama, Pratyahar, Meditation and in this process one can try something challenging but it should be optional or according to the need of an individual. If we always keep challenging and fighting with the body then we can never experience the subtle change and reactions of the body. If we are more aware during the practice, which is possible only when we are comfortable and relax in our practice then we can go beyond body and mind to experience deeper level pf our personality(consciousness). We do not have to depend upon teacher's experience but we have to experience by ourselves. Our own personal experience matters for our life to be healthy and happy.
