What no-one tells you yoga is really about

What comes to mind when someone asks you what is yoga? Yoga is only for flexible people? Yoga is only for petite women in colorful tights? Yoga is a religious cult with questionable ethics?

Danny Arguetty writes yoga is all about mindfully managing your energy. If what you do energizes you, makes you happier and creates greater engagement with life, then you are doing yoga. This means walking along the beach, watching nature, daydreaming, reading a book, going to church, cherishing your partner, spending time alone, or even working and playing all could be yoga!

if this is true then your Yoga practice becomes the art of asking these three questions:

• How does what you do impact your daily life? Does it uplift or deplete your vitality?
• Can you change what you do, how long you do it and when you do it, in order to give you more energy?
• Is this choice part of a bigger rut-pattern that wears you down and burns you out over time?

These same questions can be asked on the yoga mat. When you go through your next yoga class, start to slow down and notice your habits on the mat. Do you race after the teacher trying to keep up? Do you get obsessed with how you look or feel and forget to breathe? Do you fight through pain ignoring what is best for your body? Are you so involved with your thoughts that you lose touch with your body? This awareness of how you do yoga can be an important cue to the way you manage your energy.

Start to build a small pause into your daily habits - stop, consider why you are doing something, notice if it will energize or deplete you and change what you do or the way you do it so you will build energy and become more vital and engaged.

​Be inspired.

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Laurie's yoga schedule