3 Things I've Scrapped from My Yoga Practice

It's a week of 'last's!! Last week of the decade, last Wednesday, almost the last day, and tonight's the last full moon of 2020! We made it!

I've been looking back, thinking about what I'm letting go of at the end of this crazy year where we were already asked to let go of so much. But if this year taught us anything, it's that we need less of more than we realize (and on the flip, need more of what we took for granted).

Today, I’m sharing with you what I've already let go of in my yoga practice, in case you need some inspiration.

Three things. It’s a short list of mindsets and practices which I've learned don’t work on the mat—not just because they tend to lead us toward injury—because they go against the purpose of this practice in so many ways.

1. Expecting my body to "achieve" a pose on a timeline.

Your body isn't a machine; you can't expect it to spit out a desired result just because you gave it a certain type of input. I wish that's how it worked, but your biology is a bit more complex than that!

Every body is unique and there’s no timeline of how long it'll take you to achieve a pose. And, some bodies just aren't meant to ever get into some poses! Pushing yourself like this on the mat will typically lead to injury.

My suggestion? Rather than focusing on an end goal, focus on a method. The whole picture. The journey, the how… not the what. That's what yoga is really about, anyway.

2. Rushing through my vinyasa practice.

Luckily, I see this less and less over time among students, but I know it’s still there. It’s an echo of the rushed life we live, the desire to get to the pose (see #1) and just get on with things.

Rushing through your practice does a disservice to you on multiple levels. You skip the mindfulness practice that requires a slow-down. You skip the opportunity to build more strength, because going slowly is actually harder than going quickly. You increase the likelihood of injury because they always happen in fast-motion.

Finally, you skip those juicy moments of curiosity and depth in the physicality of the posture and observing your mind in the posture, where the real gold of understanding your body and mind better lie.

Slow down. Enjoy your movement. Be in the moment. There’s nowhere else but now!

3. Using a stretching-only approach to increase flexibility.

This is a big one! In the coming week's I’ll dive deeper into this. For so long the science on stretching just wasn’t there, and we proceeded with our best from exercise science, decades of gymnastics training and so on. But now, the science is clear.

First, let me be clear: stretching in itself isn’t bad. But for the avid yogi who only practices yoga and stretches constantly, to be more flexible in the eyes of some far-off guru (or Instagram) or achieve a pose, it’s unlikely that more stretching is necessary because unless you're cross-training with strength, after a few years yoga won’t make you strong enough in that specific way to withstand all the stretching. This is where repetitive-stress stretching injuries move in for the kill!

Strengthen first—strengthen the very thing you’re stretching. Then stretch. Do both, with more strength training than stretching (again, especially if you’re a die-hard yoga practitioner) because yoga as a movement practice already has you covered on the stretching front.

What about you? What are you releasing from your yoga practice?

This list is certainly inexhaustible. You might decide to be done judging your body for being to x, y, or z. Or to let go of some poses you know don’t work for your anatomy. Maybe you’ll decide to scrap the idea that you can’t do a specific something, or that you’re not disciplined enough to maintain your practice?

Whatever it is, let that shit go. And comment below with what you’re releasing!

As you evolve, your practice evolves, because in practice we learn about ourselves and in the learning, we can decide to make shifts and changes that better align with who we are and what we need.

Yoga forms to our body and mind, not the other way around. Treasure its ancient offerings. Treasure your Self.

Happy New Year, I’ll see you in 2021! xoxo