Reconnecting with Yoga: A Journey from Judgment to Openness
How I Learned to Move Past Judgment and Embrace Collective Practice
I’ve been getting back into my yoga asana practice for the last two days.
I noticed that in the last few months, my body started feeling achy, stiff, and painful in different areas - my left butt, my right side of my neck, my low back, my inner left knee. I thought, what is going on?!
I went to PT and did the at-home exercises. I also got massages monthly. I also changed out my pillows. I’m sure all of these things are helpful. But how did my body deteriorate in the first place?! and how come my body isn’t feeling “normal”?
Now, after two asana classes, my body is feeling better. More open. My hunched-back feeling I’ve been feeling for months is finally feeling more spacious. I’m feeling less stiff. Hopefully it keeps up.
I then reflected on what steered me away from my group asana practice in the first place.
At home, I tend to gravitate towards yin and restorative. I’m finding that it’s feeling a bit too kapha for me (sluggish, depressed, slow, stuck energy).
When I practice in community (once I can get myself to sign up for the class and go), I find myself motivated and inspired to move more.
This wasn’t always the case, especially after taking a yoga teacher training centered around social justice. I found that after taking that yoga teacher training, I started judging studios and teachers hard.
It’s like the more I learned about yoga, its roots, and the colonization of yoga in the west, the more deterred I was from practicing in public with others. The irony is yoga is meant to be practiced in the community.
My judgment could be a non-South Asian teacher pronouncing Sanskrit in a different way from my South Asian teachers. It could be a yoga teacher heading towards my direction with hands outstretched asking if I want an adjustment and me saying no (and then noticing the surprise on his face).
It could be teachers and students saying Namaste at the end of a flow (when I traveled to India, Namaste was a way of saying hello).
I love group yoga classes, but since my teacher training, my judge came in hard, so hard that it was hard to physically be in those spaces.
After going through the PQ program, I was able to notice that it’s my judge and to name it my judge. Now lately, after working on recognizing when it’s my judge, I don’t hear the judge as often as I did before. I give myself and others more grace when it comes to practicing and teaching yoga.
Nowadays, I am working on trialing different spaces and teachers. I’m choosing to continue finding, learning, and practicing with teachers whom I feel safe around (the last two days, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the classes I attended).
I recognize that we’re all on different paths and for people who choose to teach yoga, I find that most of the time, it’s brought them benefits in their own lives, whatever that may be.
I don’t know the full extent of people’s lives and I never will, so who am I to pass judgment? A large part of yoga is having control of the mind and I hope that teachers who create harm (myself included) can be aware to recognize when that does happen and to strive to learn, to know, and to do better.
Reflection Questions
When has your judge gotten in the way of your personal growth or feeling connected with others?
How can you cultivate more grace for yourself and others in your journey? What does this look like in practice?
How do you navigate the cultural aspects of yoga while still honoring its roots? What challenges have you faced in this area?
