Yoga and Stress

Just about everyone knows and believes that if you want to reduce stress you should take up yoga, right? Is yoga the new panacea? Will it really make a big difference? And what kind of yoga? And what about the millions of us who just don’t see ourselves on a yoga mat – ever! Are our concepts of yoga misguided or do we really not fit the mold?

There is no question that regular yoga practice will make a difference to one’s life and it really doesn’t matter what kind of yoga is practiced. For the majority this will usually be a physical approach to yoga and the benefits will in turn be primarily physical. They include better respiration, enhanced circulation, greater flexibility, and an overall feeling of physical well being. All of this will contribute to reducing stress. However, when the rubber hits the road in day to day life in areas where stress is likely to be triggered – at the office or at home – it just might not be enough to make much difference. Yes, you read that right! All the effort of getting to that yoga class and practicing diligently just might not prevent you from that angry outburst, that frustrated look, or that deep feeling of despair and helplessness.

Why not?

Well, for one thing you may not have paid sufficient attention to aspects of yoga that will make a difference. Let me tell a story about a yoga colleague I’ll call Vince although that was not his real name.

Vince began practicing yoga in his twenties and loved it. He worked hard at his asana practice and very soon became one of the most adept students in his class. Vince was also very short tempered and impatient but was seen as someone who was strong, and was always able to push through and make things happen. Nobody would ever describe Vince as a happy person. He had a stern look on his face and if you looked closely enough you could sense a person in emotional pain. Success was important to Vince. All of these attitudes came to the yoga mat with him. He gave himself two weeks to get his forehead to his toes in the sitting forward bend and got there with days to spare by pushing his body through the pain and practicing the posture for hours each day. He became a yoga teacher, and because of his incredible physical flexibility and prowess as a yogi in the physical arena, was featured in a prominent yoga magazine.

I met him on the conference circuit and over several years got to know him just a little. Interestingly, he had attracted a following of students who were in many ways just like him – driven to succeed and focused on attaining perfection with the physical form of yoga. Ten years after meeting Vince his conversation had not changed. He was still frustrated with many aspects of his life, still striving for perfection in all things, and still criticizing his students for not working hard enough.

To me there are two very important aspects to the practice of yoga – the “form” and the “essence”. Vince focused on the form almost exclusively and as a result missed most of the benefits that the essence of yoga might have brought to his life. Now I’m not saying that form is not important. It is! We do need to know how to work with our bodies as we practice yoga. But form is really only a tool, not an end in itself. As well as good form we also need to learn how to engage the practice of yoga in ways that take us to deeper levels of awareness at emotional, mental, and spiritual levels. If we are obsessed with the form of the practice, this is unlikely to happen.

So how do we do that? Check back here in a few days for the next blog post and I’ll share some tips with you. And the good news is that if you don’t get hung up on the form that yoga should take, you, or practically anyone you know, can engage the practice and use it as an effective stress management tool. You don’t need a body like Vince’s!