Why I do Yoga

I like a hobby but, because I’m pretty competitive and obsessive by nature, any hobby soon turns into an arms race of research, acquisition, goal setting, training planning, disappointment and eventually a sense of disillusionment with the thing I’ve been putting all those hours and all that effort into. Honestly, I could list them. Yoga is different.

When I started yoga it was on a whim. I used to describe it as an exercise class rather than a yoga class, because I was a bit squeamish about all the spiritual connotations of yoga. I approached it as a sport. At first I wanted to know how I was getting on, so I spent a lot of time looking around the class at other people and trying to “do” the poses as well as they were. I got cross with myself when I couldn’t, and felt self-conscious and uneasy. I tried to get into asanas that I wasn’t capable of and hurt myself.

Meanwhile, I was reading. I like to read around a subject. For me, it’s part of the enjoyment of a new hobby. When I started reading about yoga, initially in Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita, it turned out that the spiritual, or at least philosophical, side seemed more relevant than I had ever expected it to. I started to learn all sorts of things about myself. Like how I construct a story about what I can and can’t do. About how I make assumptions about other people and about myself that are unfounded. About how I worry about things I can’t control and criticise myself for things that aren’t my fault.

So I stopped worrying about how sweaty I was, how short my hamstrings were (and still are), how I was a million miles away from the effortless serenity of the other people in the class, and as soon as I stopped judging myself I started to really, really enjoy it. 

It turns out that I do yoga for the same reasons that I have done lots and lots of other things throughout my life – playing with Lego for hours as a child, reading, running, cycling, listening to music, taking things apart and fixing them – only now I understand why I’m doing it. It’s all been a quest to find a quiet little spot where the internal dialogue stops and I can fully relax, just bobbing along in the flow of a totally absorbing action.

So at last, after only forty four years, I’m learning to let go. I’m learning self-compassion. I think it makes me easier to be around – a better dad and a better husband*. It certainly makes me happier.

*I’d have to check that.