“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Today’s encouragement from Deborah echoes an important point I make in my own yoga classes when I teach: Take your yoga off the mat and into your life. If you learn something valuable while practicing yoga on your mat, use it in your daily life. Every conscious movement is yoga. Every change is yoga. Don’t restrict it to your mat or classroom time.

But this suggestion raises an interesting question: If we can do yoga off of our mats, what is yoga? Is it certain postures sweated out in a certain series for 90 years so you can fit into your skinny jeans as long as possible? Maybe, if that’s what you’re creating for yourself. Is it transcendental meditation that encourages you to suffer through an immense amount of physical pain and possible damage in order to get the ‘high’ of endorphines that come from putting the body through hours of struggle? Hey, if that’s what you’ve decided you want to do while you’re on the planet, who am I to question it? But is it “yoga”?

For me, yoga is the art of conscious living. Not conscious surviving or even just conscious movement for a few hours a week; conscious living. Rather than being content to fiddle with the tools themselves, learning to do fancy tricks with my body or breath, I attach my yoga practie to my intentions, purposes, and goals - to my life.

I use breath and postures on the mat to teach myself how to stay in the moment and deal with each change as it arises. Inhaling, I accept a posture, then breath and move through it consciously, finally releasing it physically and mentally to be present for the next posture: vinyasa. Off of my mat I accept each day, each unexpected event, with openness, moving thorugh it all consciously and releasing it when it’s time in order to be ready for the next change life will inevitably throw at me.

I take the Observer stance while I move and breathe to get out of the drama and let go of habits that no longer serve me. I change my attitude and behaviour to align with my higher vision of myself, detaching the effects of my past on my present: removing samskara and regaining free will. Off of my mat I let go of useless judgement and self-criticism and look honestly at my abilities and limits so I can act intelligently, with discernment instead of delusion. Yesterday does not determine today. Your opinion of me is not equal to my opinion of me: Your opinion is optional; mine is final.

On the mat I learn that postures, my body’s ability, my mind’s ability, even my own breath will come and go, improve, devolve, and be subject to change. But I will always be there. My own presence, my essential self, is my consistency. Off the mat I observe and sharpen my discernment so I can reduce my misapprehension about what’s transient and what’s here to stay - and interact with those elements accordingly.

For me, real yoga strengthens me, opens me, keeps me fit for living. What is yoga for you?