Are You Practicing, or Just Being a Good Girl?

There's a difference between discipline and self-punishment

How about just skipping the difficult postures and doing the nice ones? Or why not go a bit further and just do the ones you absolutely love? The asanas that always make you feel just splendid.

Many of us, and especially those who started practicing Ashtanga yoga in the early 2000s or before, were raised to do every single posture on every given practice day. That's 5-6 days a week.

Everything else felt like a cheat.

There was lots of sweating and obeying.

And no wonder, many of us quit.

Because Ashtanga turned out to be too hard and demanding.

Some of us felt it included an anorexic culture, and we got a sense of never being good enough.

That's a sad thing to realize. That something so beautiful and helpful would turn out to be so disempowering.

So, going to the other extreme and just trying to find some comfort on the mat might feel like the only way to get oneself to do some kind of yoga practice in the first place.

But as mature practitioners, we know by experience that stopping where the comfort ends is not helpful, either.

Tapas, self-discipline is needed. Not for self-punishment, but to help us dissolve the illusions and move towards steadiness and stillness of the mind.

And this, also, can be done very wisely. Not by obeying the rules blindly, and definitely not by harming oneself.

So, how do you find the middle way?

How to you build a practice that offers challenges, but is also joyful, and shall we say, not too uptight?

As a practitioner, how do you connect to your inner wisdom and know when to stop and let go? Modify, even skip (wild, I know!)

Well. It's a practice, isn't it?

A practice of continuous, tender observation.

A practice where we move towards truth instead of comfort.

Towards peace and wisdom instead of egoistic aspirations.

It's a practice where effort and surrender intertwine.

Softly and playfully.

And more than anything, it's a practice of love.