It makes no one to what is happening on your mat – and that is a good thing

Do you know that small, calm panic that is shilling through you when it feels like someone is keeping an eye on you? Butterflies in your stomach, goose bumps, maybe a shine sweat? As if you are on stage, even if that ‘stage’ is just a public sidewalk?

I got that feeling in the yoga class. Almost a decade I approached every practice as a place of success and failure, while I believed that everyone was present witnessing and judging, my Elke Pose.

Spoiler: they were not. And releasing this false conviction was the best thing I could have done for my practice.

On your mat is perhaps the last place where you should feel ‘about’. Yoga is not intended to be performance – transforming your practice into a show for others is in fact somewhat antithetic to general philosophy. But it appears that knowing this intellectual and actually believing that they are two very different things.

I started practicing yoga in high school, an era of theater class, team sports and figures. Yoga accompanied me to the university and offered a respite in the midst of semesters supplemented with internships and part -time jobs. Although mergeing breath and movement my mind calmness, I was never able to let go of the idea that I set up a show for everyone in the class. Every person in the room noticed my oversized t -shirt and pilde leggings. Everyone was impressed by my position in Warrior II. When I flowed through the class with grace, never stumbled, I walked out of the studio as a goddess – if not, I left an unworthy mortal.

The worst thing about this habit of mine is that, since I have never been particularly flexible, my practice was rarely a photo-perfect event. The relationship between Godin-mortal days was inherently unbalanced, so I loved the studio for a long time.

Only when I had completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training last spring last spring, did I really understand that my practice is a completely personal part and has always been. Deepening your yogic knowledge into a small cohort means that you Are Looking at each other, but in an attempt to understand. It requires vulnerability and a silent of the ego. Because if you can’t really be about the way you appear on your mat, how can you ask others to do this authentic?

But even in that microcosmic container my fellow students were ultimately focused on their own practice.

As it should be!

There is no one care that I can’t touch my toes. Nobody will ever apply applaud if I entered half -Moon with complete ease. The quality of my breathing is perhaps clear to my teacher, but the only experience that really influences it is mine. And as for the way I feel when the yoga class ends? I learn that a mortal that keeps her head high despite imperfections is more powerful than a goddess who can never be vulnerable.