I think we’ve made yoga a whole lot more complicated than it needs to be.
I love yoga. Obviously. I believe in what it can do for us physically and mentally, and I love that a yoga practice can give us a reason to stop for a little while, pay attention to our bodies and get out of our heads. But somewhere in all of that, I think we’ve created this picture of what a “real” yoga practice is supposed to look like, and sometimes I wonder if that picture is actually keeping people from doing yoga.
You know the pictures I mean. The perfectly uncluttered room. The beautiful person in matching clothes. A plant positioned just so in the corner. Maybe a candle. Definitely excellent lighting. Nobody’s dog is walking across the yoga mat, there isn’t a laundry basket just outside the frame, and apparently nobody remembered halfway through their practice that they forgot to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer.
I don’t know whose yoga practice that is, but it isn’t mine. And honestly, I don’t think it has to be yours either.
The Yoga Practice You Actually Have
There is the yoga practice we imagine ourselves having, and then there is the one we actually have. The imaginary version might happen every morning at 6:00. The house is quiet, we have plenty of time, we roll out our yoga mat, move for an hour, meditate afterward and start the day feeling like an entirely different person.
The real version might happen at 4:17 on a Tuesday afternoon because that’s when you finally found twenty minutes. Maybe you’re still wearing the shirt you wore to work. Maybe the dog decides Savasana is clearly an invitation to get involved. Maybe you do three poses before remembering that you need to take something out of the freezer for dinner.
I’ve used a hallway in my own house for yoga because it was the only place I had enough room to roll out a mat. Maybe the rest of the house wasn’t working that day, or I didn’t feel like venturing outside, so the hallway it was. Was it an inspiring yoga space? Not particularly. Was there a beautiful view? Nope. But there was enough room for me and my mat, and that was what I needed.
I think about that sometimes because it’s such a good example of what yoga can be when we stop making so many rules for it. I could have decided I didn’t have the right space and skipped it. Instead, I practiced in a hallway, and that was perfectly fine.
I think we sometimes make yoga harder to come back to because we’ve created so many ideas about what it is supposed to look like. A yoga practice doesn’t have to be long to matter. You don’t have to be flexible. You don’t need a perfectly peaceful house. You don’t have to know the names of every pose, and you definitely don’t have to feel particularly calm when you start. Actually, feeling decidedly not calm might be a pretty good reason to roll out the mat.
Maybe We’ve Made Yoga Too Complicated
When I think about the things I’ve stuck with in my own life, they usually have something in common: I enjoy them. That sounds ridiculously obvious, but we don’t talk about enjoyment very much when we talk about healthy habits.
Instead, we talk about discipline, consistency, commitment, goals and progress. Those things have their place, but what about simply liking something? What if you roll out your yoga mat because you like the way your body feels afterward? What if you practice because you like having fifteen minutes when nobody needs anything from you? What if you like the music you play, the room you’re in or the artwork underneath you?
What if sometimes yoga is just nice?
That seems like a perfectly good reason to me. I don’t think every yoga practice needs to accomplish something. You don’t need to become more flexible by December. You don’t have to master a pose or turn your practice into another item you’re measuring and tracking. There are enough things in life asking us to be productive. Yoga doesn’t always need to be one of them.
Your Mat Doesn’t Have to Whisper
This probably explains quite a bit about Big Raven Yoga.
When we started creating yoga mats, I wasn’t interested in making another beige mat. Or gray. Or some very tasteful shade somewhere between beige and gray. There’s nothing wrong with those colors, of course. If that’s what you love, great. But I love art. I love old books and paper. I love unexpected colors, botanical illustrations, strange little details and designs that give you something new to notice the tenth time you look at them.
I like things that feel as though an actual person had a hand in making them. Sometimes I like things that are beautiful. Sometimes I like things that are a little strange. And sometimes I like things that make me laugh. Why shouldn’t a yoga mat do that?
We spend a surprising amount of time looking at our mats when we practice. Downward Dog gives you a pretty good view of one. So do Child’s Pose, Plank and plenty of other poses. That space underneath you becomes part of your practice, and I don’t think it needs to disappear into the background.
Your yoga mat can be covered in flowers. It can be dark and moody. It can be colorful. It can have artwork that reminds you of a place you’ve been or a book you’ve read. It can have words on it that make you stop and think, or something that makes you smile when you look down.
None of that makes the yoga happening on top of it any less meaningful.
What Does Being “Good at Yoga” Even Mean?
I hear versions of “I’m not good at yoga” all the time, and I always wonder what that really means. Usually it means someone isn’t flexible enough. They can’t touch their toes. They wobble in balance poses. They can’t do something they saw somebody else doing.
But yoga isn’t gymnastics. If you roll out your yoga mat and move your body in a way that works for your body today, I’m not sure how you can be bad at that.
You might wobble or fall out of a pose. You might discover that one side of your body apparently belongs to a completely different person than the other side. You might have a day when something you did easily last week suddenly feels impossible. Welcome to having a body.
One of the things I appreciate about yoga is that it gives us an opportunity to notice those things without necessarily having to fix them. Today can be different from yesterday. You work with what you have that day.
There Is No Yoga Police
Nobody is coming to your house to see whether your practice lasted sixty minutes. Nobody is checking whether you skipped Savasana or whether you can remember the Sanskrit name for every pose. And if somebody does care that much about what you’re doing on your own yoga mat, I probably wouldn’t invite them over for yoga.
You are allowed to create a practice that fits your actual life. Maybe that’s a full class several times a week. Maybe it’s ten minutes in your bedroom before everyone else wakes up. Maybe it’s the living room, the porch, the backyard or, yes, a hallway because that happens to be where there is room that day.
Maybe you practice every day for two weeks and then don’t touch your mat for five days. Just roll it out again. That’s one of the nicest things about a yoga mat. It doesn’t know how long it has been sitting there, and it certainly isn’t judging you for it.
Let Your Yoga Practice Be Yours
Once you stop trying to make your yoga practice look like somebody else’s, you can start figuring out what actually works for you.
Maybe you want silence. Maybe you want music. Maybe you like a carefully planned sequence, or maybe you roll out your mat and decide what to do once you’re standing on it. Your favorite practice might be sweaty and difficult, while somebody else’s is twenty minutes of stretching on the floor.
Even your own practice doesn’t have to be the same every day. Some days you might want yoga to challenge you. Other days you might just want to stretch a little and be done. I think there’s room for both.
The same goes for the space where you practice. It doesn’t need to look like a yoga studio. Your living room is fine. Your bedroom is fine. Outside is wonderful when the weather cooperates. And sometimes the hallway is just fine too.
You don’t have to wait until everything is quiet, clean and organized. If that were a requirement, some of us might never get around to yoga. I’ve written before about practicing yoga in a messy house, and I still feel the same way. Waiting for the house, the schedule or life in general to cooperate is a pretty good way to keep putting off something you actually enjoy.
A Little Less Perfect, Please
There is something else I think we lose when yoga becomes too polished: personality.
I don’t want Big Raven Yoga to tell you what a yoga person is supposed to look like. I don’t want our mats to suggest that you need to become a quieter, calmer, more neutral version of yourself before you belong on one.
You can have stiff hamstrings. Your house can be messy. The dog can wander through the middle of it. You can be in a bad mood and have seventeen other things running through your head. None of that means you shouldn’t roll out your mat.
Maybe after ten minutes you’ll feel a little different. Maybe you won’t. That’s okay too. There are days when yoga can change your whole mood, and there are other days when you’re still annoyed about exactly the same thing when you’re finished.
I still think it was worth rolling out the mat.
The Yoga Mat You Want to Roll Out
I’ve written before about choosing a yoga mat based on things like grip, thickness, materials and the type of yoga you practice. Those things matter. A yoga mat still needs to do its job. But I think there’s another question worth asking when you choose one.
Do you actually like it?
Not just, “Is it practical?” or “Does this look like what a yoga mat is supposed to look like?” I mean, do you like looking at it? Would you leave it somewhere you can see it? Does it feel a little bit like you?
Because if you genuinely like the thing you’re practicing on, I think there’s a better chance you’re going to want to roll it out. And if you roll it out more often, that’s a pretty good place to start.
That’s one of the reasons we’ve never been particularly interested in making yoga mats that look like everyone else’s. There are enough of those already. I’d rather make the mat you see and immediately think, Yep. That one’s mine.
If you’re looking for a yoga mat with a little more personality, take a look through the Big Raven Yoga collections and choose the one you actually want to look at when you roll it out. Don’t worry about which one looks the most like a yoga mat. Choose the one that looks the most like you.
Maybe We Could Take Yoga Seriously Without Taking Ourselves So Seriously
The older I get, the less interested I am in turning everything I enjoy into another thing I need to be good at. Sometimes I want to make something because making it is fun. Sometimes I want to read a book because I like the story. Sometimes I want to sit outside with a cup of coffee without turning it into a mindfulness exercise. And sometimes I want to roll out my yoga mat and move for a while without deciding what I’m trying to accomplish.
I think there’s room for that in yoga. Yoga can be meaningful without being solemn. It can be important without becoming another obligation. You can take your practice seriously without taking yourself quite so seriously.
You can wobble, laugh, forget what the pose is called, practice for twelve minutes instead of sixty or roll your mat out in a hallway because that’s where you have room. And if life gets busy and the mat stays rolled up for a while, it’ll still be there when you come back.
No perfect yoga room required. Just roll it out wherever it fits.