Movement for Modern Life founder Kat Farrants’ weekly column, where she shares her thoughts, tips and tools for living a bigger, brighter life, moving and living more. Don’t forget to tune in to our weekly facebook live chat with Kat every Friday at 1pm for more!
Us humans appear to be somewhat obsessed with the notion of progression. Well I certainly am! I love to think that I’m progressing and achieving goals, and I think I’m not alone in this.
But the idea of goals is a tad troublesome when it comes to yoga. As you know, yoga is by nature non-competitive. But humans being humans, we love to compete with ourselves and we love to ‘progress’ our practice. And usually, that progression is taken to be the ability to perform ever more tricky poses.You’ll have seen we have Beginners/Improvers and Advanced classes on the site. And it’d be logical to think that we ‘progress’ through these phases. But it ain’t necessarily so!
Some bodies will never be destined for some poses. And other bodies manage to slip, fairly easily into the knots required for Intermediate/Advanced, but these folks are fairly new to yoga. It doesn’t mean that these are advanced yogis, it just means that these bodies might be more fit and limber, with proportions that help yoga poses, or maybe the practitioner has a gymnastics or dancing background. But we must remember that, wonderful that these poses are to look at, and tempting as it is to imitate these bodies, that isn’t what yoga is about.
Remember that yoga is simply moving with your breath and the search for unity and a deeper connection to ourselves, each other and the world, whilst realising that we are all the same!
So if you’ve been practicing yoga for years, and you are ‘advanced’, don’t be afraid to enjoy ‘beginners’ classes. And beginners, don’t think that advanced poses are for the advanced. They are just for the athletic.
The most advanced ones will be seen meditating and practicing Yin Yoga. Now, that really is giving your soul a big hug.
I do look forward to hearing your views, thoughts and ideas on this – share them on my blog post here!
With love
Kat xxx
Watch Kat’s weekly Facebook Live video below for more thoughts on this, and don’t forget to tune in this Friday at 1pm on the MFML facebook page for the next installment!
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