Deepen Your Yoga Practice With Teacher Training
You love yoga. Yoga has changed your life and yet you can’t begin to articulate exactly how and why. You just know that you are better for it. You sense that you are just scratching the surface of what yoga truly is and are eager to go deeper. But what the heck does that really mean?
When you’ve been doing yoga for a while, it’s common to get to the point where you feel you want to take your practice further. Maybe you started practicing because a friend dragged you to a class. Maybe it was a way to get fit or balance out your workout regimen. Perhaps you had back pain and the doctor recommended yoga. Or you might just be one of the millions of people that suffer from anxiety, depression, or insomnia, and you came to yoga to learn to breathe, meditate, and relax. Better yet, you might have been hoping for a spiritual awakening or to reach enlightenment. Whatever the reason, there was probably just enough suffering to get you in the door.
In reality, we come to yoga because we are yearning for something we do not know yet. We seek a sort of transcendence or freedom from our habitual patterns of conditioning. We’d like to connect to something larger than our idea of ourselves.
As your practice grows over time, you gain faith in the power of it. It enables you to look deeply at yourself so that you can skillfully meet all that life brings. So now what? How do you keep going? How do you embody the practice and learn more?
Going “deeper” into a yoga pose.
Poses are a tool for deepening yoga practice
When you associate yoga with just the asana practice, you might interpret it to mean putting more physical effort into your practice. The idea of stretching further, bending more, and getting stronger, fits with our familiar Western paradigm. Yet, when we push our bodies into poses, we can cause injury. We may be trying to do something that we are not ready to do, or used to be able to do, or think we should do. When we do this, we are not practicing the “deeper” teachings of yoga that include, non-harming, seeing the truth, and not grasping.
Going deeper into a yoga pose means to rest more deeply in the pose that you are already in. See the truth of it. Experience it. See how you relate to what is happening in that moment, in the mind and body. You must learn to soften into the pose and bring your full awareness to it.
There is not some great Instagram-worthy pose out there that will bring you to a better place than the one you are in now. It certainly won’t make you enlightened. Rather asana becomes a tool with which to see ourselves more deeply. To fight with reality is futile. It always wins and it just creates suffering. With patience and gentleness around the process, your experience of what it means to go deeper into yoga asana will evolve.
Asana as a component of yoga complete practice
Although practicing advanced yoga poses can be fun, asana is the gateway drug to a deeper practice that encompasses the body, the mind, and the heart. The word asana in Sanskrit means seat or posture. We do asana so that we can sit for meditation and learn to go within. Of the 196 Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, only three speak directly to asana. The most well-known is Sutra 2.46: sthira sukham asanam (the posture should be steady and comfortable).
The other two go on to describe that asana can only be mastered once the yogi learns to let go of the natural tendency for restlessness, relax into the effort, and meditate on the infinite. As a result, one will no longer be disturbed by the dualities of life.
In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a manual of Hatha yoga practices, Swami Svatmarama explains that asanas are described first because it is from the base of steadiness and focus that asana provides that allows the yoga practitioner to progress to higher goals. By doing Asana first, one develops the habit of discipline and the ability to concentrate, both of which are necessary for pranayama (breath practice) and meditation.
The body is cleansed through physical practice and is made into a “vehicle fit for the spirit.” It is from this place of deeper self-awareness that one is better able to practice the ethical underpinnings of yoga known as Yama & Niyama and truly embody the practice.
The body is cleansed through physical practice and is made into a “vehicle fit for the spirit.”
Embodying the path of yoga
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, he outlines an eight-limbed path as a guideline for how to live a meaningful and purposeful life. The first two limbs of Yama & Niyama serve as a prescription for moral and ethical conduct. Asana is only one of the limbs of yoga. To truly explore what yoga is and go deeper into practice, one must delve into all the limbs of yoga.
1.) Yamas (external disciplines or one’s relationship to the world of people and objects): Includes five practices
a. Ahimsa: Non-harming, non-violence
b. Satya: Honesty, truthfulness
c. Asteya: Not stealing, not taking what is not freely given
d. Brahmacharya: Wise use of energy, including sexual energy
e. Aparigragha: Not accumulating what is not essential
2.) Niyamas (internal disciplines or personal principles for governing insight): Includes five practices
a. Sauca: Purification or cleanliness
b. Santosa: Contentment
c. Tapas: Discipline or patience
d. Svadyaya: Self-study
e. Isvara-Pranidhana: Devotion, dedication to pure awareness
3.) Asana (physical postures)
4.) Pranayama (breath control or techniques)
5.) Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
6.) Dharana (focus, concentration)
7.) Dhyana (meditation)
8.) Samadhi (union, integration, bliss)
These limbs are not linear, but are meant to be practiced simultaneously. We often enter in at the third limb, Asana, as it is the most tangible part of practice. Yet, if it is just about postures, we end up with a fragmented, imbalanced yoga practice that has no roots.
This is where you may find yourself yearning for more. As practice matures, we move out of pure self-interest and into a movement that is in tune with the world and concerned with how we show up in the world. Yoga ceases to be some sort of self-improvement project but becomes the way in which we meet all of life's circumstances.
Overtime and with the guidance of a teacher, one can begin to explore the internal limbs of the path. You may begin a dedicated seated practice of pranayama and meditation. You can learn to hone in the senses and sharpen your focus. The ancient practice of regulating the breath will help you connect your body and mind. The real benefit in these comes from the regularity of practice. This takes time and patience. When you collect the attention in meditation and in breathwork, you can begin to quiet the mind. Our patterns of conditioning become clearer. We can choose how we want to respond and relate to our experience.
Patanjali defines yoga in Sutra 1.2: Yogas citta vrtta nirodhah (Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind). The ultimate goal of yoga is to understand the mind. It is a waking up of the mind and body and also the stilling of the mind and body. We do it by exploring all aspects of yoga.
If you want to go deeper into your practice, sign up for teacher training
Yoga is about how we take in teachings and put them into practice
In the end, cultivating a yoga practice is not just about strength and flexibility. Practicing a sequence of postures regularly can give you the framework to go deeper into yoga practice. You must use that discipline to cultivate the equilibrium of mind and body. However, just showing up to do a series of postures can create the illusion of what it means to embody this practice.
What good does it do to do great arm balances if your relationships are a mess and you are lacking wisdom and compassion? Yoga can easily become another form of materialism. We can unknowingly confuse the techniques of yoga with the experience of yoga. Ultimately, we want psychological understanding and transformation.
Practice must infiltrate everything, all aspects of life. This is what it means to go deeper, to embody the practice, and to have an unremitting attention to the present experience. You are not crazy for yearning for what you do not yet know because you have only had a glimpse of all that yoga has to offer.
You are ready for Yoga Teacher Training.
If you want to go deeper in your Yoga Practice just take a look at our Yoga Teacher Training Program.
It’s your opportunity to deepen your experience and understanding of yoga in a 200 Hour program certified by the Yoga Alliance. From the steady practice of asana, pranayama, meditation, and self-inquiry, you can discover your own true essence, maximizing your impact as a teacher or purely for your own personal growth.