Yoga: What's it All About? by Gabe Hopp

Do you ever have the feeling that yoga is very hard to put into words? Like, if someone were to ask you what you like about yoga, what would you say? If they wanted to know, why you are so committed to yoga, what you get out of it, what the draw is, would you have a concrete answer? For many years, I felt like the answer was hard to pin down. I couldn’t make it succinct. It wasn’t convincing enough, sometimes not even to myself! What is it about yoga that has such a pull? Why do we love it so much?

Well, the more I investigate and study the original intention of the practice, the more I recognize the myriad reasons why we are drawn to this healing art. The reason that there isn’t a succinct answer to the question “ what do I love about yoga?” is that there are a multitude of benefits, lessons and feeling-states that come along with the practice. Let’s explore a few.

ENERGY

The ancient yogis believed in an energetic force inherent in the body, mind and breath which is the source of life. It’s the energy of aliveness. It’s a spark, a strong sensation, a heightened sense of awareness. This energetic force is called prana and it’s the number one reason you feel like a million bucks after practice. When we move and breath with intention and awareness, our body is flooded with more prana, more beneficial energy. So when, after class, you walk out to your car and sit in a daze and aren’t quite sure who you are or what you’re doing, it’s because you’re high on prana. 

BODY

No one likes a stiff body. It sucks to feel stuck. Whether you are stiff from age, from activity, from lack of use, it’s all pretty unpleasant. Having a hard time getting down to or up off the floor? Make a grunting sound every time you sit down or stand up? Can’t comfortably put on your pants? Enter yoga. Yoga unstiffens, it unsticks. Through intention and breath, we begin to unlock stuck parts in the body so that pathways of energy can flow freely. When we open these pathways in the body, we become more fluid. Easier. More graceful. Yoga encourages openness and ease in our physical space. And this matters! You are in your body all day, every day for YOUR ENTIRE LIFE. Let’s celebrate the body and make it as happy as possible. You deserve to be in a comfortable body!

BREATH

The word for breath work in yoga is pranayama. This can be translated in two ways: to control the energy (from the word yama meaning to restrain) or to set the energy free (from the word ayama meaning to release). Breath is life. Life is breath. Yoga is one of the few physical arts that emphasizes the breath. And why not learn to harness the breath? It’s the only autonomic bodily function that we can control. We can literally slow our breath down, speed it up, make it longer, make it deeper. Which means that we can use breath control to our advantage. By slowing down and elongating the breath, we can teach our nervous system to calm down. By regulating the breath, we can regulate our entire system to be more grounded and settled. And breath serves as the gateway between the body and the mind. Which brings us to…..

MIND

Ah, the mind. Meditation is trending, which is an amazing boon for our society. The more people learn to be aware, learn their habit patterns of mind, learn to comfortably sit still with themselves, the better off we all will be. Meditation and mindfulness encourage us to be intentional with our words, with our thoughts, with our actions. Through meditative experiences, we learn to slow down. To be with things as they are (even when they are crummy!). To be willing to let thoughts come and go, without getting stuck in them. Yoga practices teach us to listen, to be with what is and to use our discerning awareness to know when something needs our attention and when something needs to be let go. Yoga is an obvious pathway to meditation.

NERVOUS SYSTEM

Lately, I have been really reveling in the ways in which yoga works on our nervous systems. We live in a heightened state of anxiety and speed. Our lives move super fast, we’re always busy, we’re always doing, being productive. Yoga says, hey! slow down! Take a breath. Chill out! To give ourselves 60 or 75 or 90 minutes to just be in our bodies, to just be with our breath, to intentionally ground ourselves in the now…wow. What an incredible gift we have in yoga. With just a mat and ourselves, we have an antidote to modern life, a counterbalance to speed and unease. And if that doesn’t convince you (or your friends and family) that yoga is beneficial on a multitude of levels, I don’t know what will!