The Evolution of Your Practice by Gabe Hopp

This past week in several of my classes I taught a really hard pose called astavakrasana. It’s an arm balance that requires a very intense twist plus a chaturanga plus extending the legs straight out to one side. And I told several of those classes that I often avoid teaching that pose and really only teach it about once ever 3 years. The feedback that I got from several students was that they loved working on something super hard. And, that they wished that we did those poses more often. When I really stop to think about my approach, it is a little ridiculous…

Upon reflection, I realized that of course this is the case! If students don’t ever see poses presented, let alone have the opportunity to work on them, how are they ever going to learn them? And, even if you can’t complete the final pose or two, you still had the opportunity to do all the preparatory work and that counts for most of the practice. I had the sense that I was keeping students from feeling discouraged, but in fact, I was keeping them from knowing about the full breadth of available poses.

A big part of learning and growing in your yoga practice is expanding your horizons. This includes studying different styles than you’re used to, trying new teachers than you usually go to, incorporating a new meditative or breath technique to see its effects, etc. If we always do the same thing in yoga (as with literally anything in life!) there are inherent limitations to our potential for growth. Repetition is certainly not wrong, nor should it be discouraged in yoga. Repetition is how we truly learn things. But, breaking out of our typical patterns of movement/behavior/breathing/thinking presents us the chance to be different. And change doesn’t really happen without, well, something changing.

At the end of this week, one of my favorite yoga teachers is coming to our studio. She taught me and Alison in our formative years of learning yoga. She is someone who is continually changing and expanding to meet the shifting needs of her own evolution. It’s super cool to see and it’s especially cool to join her on the mat and experience her ever-evolving style of yoga. So, just a little encouragement from me to you, that if you are perhaps in a bit of a yoga rut, that there are always ways to make a shift. And joining us for this weekends’ practices could be just the ticket.