WHAT IS YOGA? (Part 1 – To Cut A Long Story Short)
October 2025, Kashmir, India
Sitting in a shikara boat on a family trip to Srinagar to celebrate my Indian father-in-law’s 80th birthday, it struck me in the middle of Dal Lake at dusk. This was what yoga feels like – the sound of silence in the serene vastness of the lake, a respite from the honking cars, chaotic streets and bustling markets of the city.
When I tell people I’m a yoga teacher, the comment I hear most frequently is: “Oh, I’m not good at yoga/ I don’t do yoga – I’m not flexible.” In other words, yoga is widely thought of as simply exercise, and more specifically, as exercise that is best suited to the hypermobile among us.
This is simply not true, and here is why.
The sage Patanjali, who is considered the Father of Classical Yoga, defines yoga as the stilling of the mind. He goes on to list 8 progressive steps on the yoga path, of which Asana (physical postures) is only the third! The other “limbs” of yoga being Yama= social ethics, Niyama= personal practices of discipline, Pranayama= breath control, Pratyahara= turning awareness inwards, Dharana= concentration, Dhyana= meditation, and Samadhi= the ultimate goal ie total absorption, a state of bliss.
While Patanjali’s 8-limbed system is the most famous framework for yoga, it’s by no means the only one. The later Hatha & Tantra yoga traditions for example added further practices including mudra (hand gestures), bandha (energetic locks), kriya/ shatkarma (purification techniques), mantra (mind “tools”) and visualisation. Other yoga paths (eg karma yoga= path of selfless action, bhakti yoga= path of devotion towards God, jnana yoga= path of knowledge) don’t even include a physical component!
What should be pretty obvious from the above is that the physical exercises commonly associated with yoga in the West are only one part of a wider set of practices that constitute yoga.
So yoga is a set of practices. But it is also the state of being we are trying to achieve through these practices. A state of awareness, clarity and inner peace – the stilling of the mind that Patanjali talks about in his Yoga Sutras. It could be said therefore that we “do” yoga in order to “become” yoga. It is in this “state of yoga”, beyond the more limited scope of physical fitness, where the real magic of yoga lies. Why? Simply because being calm and deeply present allows us to navigate life and its inevitable difficulties with much greater ease and joy. (I will expand on the profound connection between joyfulness and being in the present in a future post.)
That is yoga in a nutshell. So next time you think you are not, or would not be, “good” at yoga because you’re not flexible, please remember this: The ability to turn oneself into a human pretzel does not automatically make one an advanced yogi! Yoga is not just a type of exercise; it is an ongoing, lifelong process of refinement and self-mastery on every level -physical, mental, emotional, energetic and spiritual-, and a practical tool of existence that extends far beyond the yoga mat and into daily life.