Yoga Beyond Belief: Insights to Awaken and Deepen Your Practice

was on a swimming team in high school and clearly recall having the thought, at about age fifteen, that if I swam a mile regularly I would be able to swim well and be fit when I was eighty or ninety, so I decided to try. I was fortunate to have this kind of intention early and it greatly increased with the study of Hatha yoga. In the early days of our Los Angeles yoga center, which was on the second floor across from a meeting hall, I would look out the window and watch people arriving and leaving for events. There would be supple, energetic kids running up and down the stairs and playing. Then I’d notice many middle-aged and older folks coming in with stooped shoulders, bent frames, stiff bodies, and worse. I realized that the bodies of the older people were essentially the same as those of the younger people, just a few years later. Without endeavoring, without regular work to maintain strength and flexibility, people can lose their mobility.
    How would you act if you received a wonderful new car when you were sixteen years of age but were told that this was to be your only vehicle for your entire lifetime? How would you care for it? Although our bodies change and are self-healing, we do in fact have only one body for our lifetime. Acknowledging this fact and treating the body accordingly is an important part of taking the long view. We are all subject to setbacks from circumstance, accident, injury, or illness. Yogis learn and gather tools to rebalance themselves and to become self-healers. Where will we be ten or twenty years from now if we do not have a personal yoga practice? Many students are concerned or worried that they do not make progress quickly enough. It is actually fairly easy to stay where you are now, maintaining current levels of strength, flexibility, andendurance for many years. Most people would be pretty happy if they could be in the physical condition they are in today twenty years from now. In the long view, even staying in the same place is a great attainment. Young people often push aggressively in their yoga practices and cause long-term, long-lasting injuries. Joints and ligaments can be injured or worn out. Are we practicing in a way that builds and maintains our body’s parts or that wears them out? Are we even asking that question? Holding such questions during practice is important. Even if someone fifty, sixty, or seventy years of age just beginning yoga could maintain his or her current level of physical ability for the next quarter century, it would be of great value and benefit. Practice with the long view by holding an entire lifetime in perspective. We need to practice so that, looking back years from now, we’ll be content with ourselves.

The Asanas Are Tools, Not Goals
    “Have no goal!” is another common expression we hear attributed to Eastern philosophies. We’re told that goals lead to pressure and conflict—between the present actuality and the desired possibility. The message encourages us to live only in the moment, but is this even possible? Deeper questions often end in paradox or, perhaps better said, polarity. Does time exist or is there only eternity? Is light matter or energy? These questions have no single answer. The answer depends on how you look at the question. Should I have goals in my practice or no goals? The answer is yes, to both. We can have goals of strength, endurance, and flexibility. We may want to attain a certain asana or master certain techniques. But underlying the goals a softer core of
non-goal awareness
is needed. We begin to see that our abilities, like all things, wax and wane. The process and constant attunement with the actuality of the moment is more important than any attainment. When goal orientation no longer drives us, we can move from an inner place of being rather than from the harder outer place of doing. It isimportant to balance
attaining
with
attuning
. We may want to attain a stronger, better asana, but it should not be at the expense of attuning to our body’s capabilities in the moment. It is possible to have goals
and
have no goal at the same time.
    In addition to balancing our overall goal orientation with an inward approach, we need to consider how we tend to make each asana a goal in and of itself. We see the Lotus pose, a beautiful backbend, or the Headstand, and it becomes our goal to achieve it. This desire can create an aggressive or competitive practice and lead to injury. It is a common mindset to try to