‘What stretches in Marychasana A?’

, one of the students in the Mysore group in Frankfurt asked me today. 

After thinking, actually, what stretches the most in yoga postures is the mind.

During my early years of practice, I had the fortune to work with a teacher with great technical insight. I learned solid, technical foundations that helped me develop practice from a place of understanding and confidence. At some point, though, yoga technique became too much and started to get in the way of practice.

I had to change teachers and find my own way of doing things.

As much as yoga technique is useful, an excess of it kills spontaneity and hinders the experience of freedom and joy that yoga can offer.

There is an undeniable problem of teaching yoga without any technical input. If the body moves how it ’s conditioned to move, we might be repeating wrong patterns consistently, which, overtime, is a recipe for disaster.

On the flip side, an excess of technique becomes problematic if it turns yoga into something to be performed or analised. That is one reason why I dislike yoga drills : they put you in the mindset of achieving.

There are different tendencies at play, for instance, a desire to be perfect, a need to be right, or longing to feel seen and valued. But our yoga practice doesn’t need to bear the weight of our doubts and fears.

In my experience, a consistent yoga practice should help us release stuff, realise that there’s nothing to prove to anyone, that everyone else is too preoccupied with themselves to spare us any genuine attention, and that we must figure out the way to make it to our yoga mat each day.

As useful as technique can be, it is at the service of practice. If it is overcomplicating things or killing our mojo, then, it’s not working. Also, there are many ways of doing the same thing, and, more often than not, A and B can both be right. This is something that heavily technique oriented teachers sometimes fail to understand.

In my eyes, yoga must help us detach from the chatter of the mind and the fragile ego, that is always lacking something, and encourage us to tune into something deeper within.

Our intuition, inner compass, guru, light, God, we are touching, ideally, on our yoga mat. With practice, we may manage to bring that same awareness into our daily lives, and hopefully, inspire others to do the same.

Happy moon day x

Carmen Yague