What, you want to be a yoga teacher, you cannot even do Lotus?
True, but do I have to?
Despite the doubts, people from my immediate environment ask me for advice on yoga. Maybe they just want to test me?
For example, last week a friend who started yoga a few months ago wrote to me and wondered if this would ever become easier with the Asana practice. In comparison to the well-trained 23-year-old models in class, she somehow feels like an elephant and there is this one asana she will never manage in her whole life.
Another day a colleague of my husband was visiting us. He really wants to start yoga, but he does not feel agile enough. He can not even sit cross-legged, but at least he started to practice it.
Both statements are actually based on the same problem: Many people think they need to be super-mobile to practice yoga. Of course a fatal mistake. The physical part of yoga makes it possible for us to move and experience our body in a new way. And everyone has their individual challenges: short tendons, tense muscles, crooked bones, anything. The gentle movements of yoga can do a lot – but they do not have to. Yoga is not gymnastics. All you have to do in the first yoga class is breathing and sit still for five minutes – the latter not even in crosslegged, hero or lotus position. Fortunately, I was able to calm down these two.
The problem remains: Many beginners think that you have to master handstands, lotus and splits to practice yoga, preferably everything at the same time. Part of the problem are pictures of super flexible yogis on instagramm. But in the end, these are just photos taken in a fraction of a second. It does not always work. Yoga is not a competition, there is no good or bad. On Instagram, there is a competition already. But you do not have to participate.
So head up and move on!
Heike
