4 Surprising Ways Yoga Helped Me in the Real World
Yoga is more than an exercise; it’s a mindset
I was an athlete in high school and when I first left for college, I knew I needed to find another way to stay in shape other than playing team sports. I took up jogging and in 2011 ran a half marathon.
One day, a few years later, I was at dinner with a highschool friend and old teammate, who also had picked up running after school and had run a full marathon the year prior. She looked happy and fit, so I was surprised when she told me she had stopped running. Yoga was now her only form of exercise.
Before this I had tried yoga a few times but had never taken it seriously; our encounter convinced me I should give it another try. Because I wanted flexibility in when and for how long I would exercise, I began to look for classes online and eventually found a teacher I love: Fiji McAlpine. Three years later, I’m still at it.
I’m not going to pretend yoga is the way — the path towards wherever you want to go or whoever you want to be — but yoga has been a way for me. Here are five ways yoga has changed my life for the better.
#1. I feel stronger (& hotter) than I ever have
When I first started practicing yoga, I began to feel sore in parts of my body I hadn’t known had muscles, for example in my feet, parts of my back, and shoulders. I also began further strengthening the large muscles which make up the core. After only two months of regular practice (four times per week for 20–50 minutes), I was leaner, more muscular, and could hold my body in ways I didn’t know were possible. My posture started to improve as well.
I also went to the doctor recently and learned my heartrate was 58 BPM. A low heart rate is typically associated with high-performance athletes. Fewer beats per minutes is a sign the heart is so strong that it does not need to pump as often in order to distribute enough blood and oxygen throughout the body.
A lot of people think yoga is not a “real” workout. I understand this misconception as I’ve often gone to 1.5-hour classes and left feeling like I didn’t get my heart rate up enough.
Some types of yoga are more relaxed and focus on stretching, but others focus on movement and holding strong poses. I like to get more of a workout during my practice, so I prefer the latter, specifically Power or Vinyasa Yoga.
#2. My mind is more focused
Yoga requires not just physical stamina but mental focus. When I stand on one leg in Warrior Three (photo below) or Pose of a Dancer (photo above) or on my arms in Firefly (cover photo), I must focus all of my attention on my body and my gaze on a point on the floor in front of me. The more my mind wanders the harder it is to stay stable. The more I can steady my breath and keep a clear head, the longer I can stay in the pose, and the stronger I become both mentally and physically.
Maintaining focus when your body is under stress has enormous value in the real world.
By doing balancing poses, I’m training my mind to remain calm even when my body is under stress. This has enormous value off the mat as well. Say you are in a meeting at work. You have a problem to solve and you suggest a solution, but someone shoots down your idea. You feel symptoms of stress. Your heart rate begins to elevate and your face turns red. In a way, this feeling is not very different from what you feel when you have been standing on one leg for 20 seconds.
Because of my practice, I can more easily stay focused on the task at hand when under stress. I learned to direct my attention away from distractions such as what I look like to the other people in the room and towards my body’s alignment. Similarly, in a meeting, I direct my attention away from useless second-guessing (“What if I looked stupid?”) and towards the problem we are solving.
#3. I learned to listen to my body
In other forms of exercise, like running, I felt as if my mind were working in opposition to my body. When I was on a long run and my muscles started to tire, my body would start to yell “Stop!” and my mind would reply, “Not now. Keep going!” This was the mental exercise. And it strengthened my will-power.
But in yoga, there is more of a two-way information flow. Yoga poses are more complicated than the movements we must make in order to run; to do them properly, we must not only tell our bodies what to do but also listen to what the body is telling us.
When holding a balancing pose for example, when I start to get tired and my muscles start to relax, my hip sometimes pops out to compensate for the shift in weight and stay balanced. I know the moment this happens, I must increase my effort by re-engaging my leg so that I can remain in the correct position. Or gracefully come out of the pose to rest if I’ve pushed myself enough.
During a pose like Warrior Three (below), for example, I constantly ask my body: “are my hips square to the front of the mat, are my muscles engaged in both legs, am I maintaining a steady breath?” and more generally, “does this feel right?” The mind must have will-power but also empathy.
In life as well, we need to have this honest dialogue with ourselves in order to make good decisions. Say you are on a date with someone you like, and she asks you if you’d like to go to her place. She is nice, smart and attractive; your conscious mind sees no reason to say no to her proposal.
But when you close your eyes, think about the idea, and observe yourself, you notice you don’t feel good about it. Maybe there are signs of anxiety: your heart is racing, your palms are sweating. Call it your gut, call it your heart, call it your temporal lobe — whatever it is, there’s something else besides your hard logic and reason that is telling you this is not a good idea.
Just because your mind doesn't understand why this is the case, doesn’t mean you are wrong to be hesitant. Maybe you don’t want to go home with her right now. Maybe you just need to get to know her better, and the rest of you will come around later. Or maybe she’s really your daughter who has traveled through time and your body knows something is wrong, even though you two do not.
In the West, we tend to take the body and its messages for granted and view our minds as all-knowing. But the body knows more than we think. Yoga lets us learn to be aware of the parts of ourselves that are not our conscious minds, and let those signals guide us when appropriate.
#4. It feels delicious
I’ve never enjoyed exercise so much until I started yoga. By bending over my stretched out legs or reaching my arms to the sky and breathing deeply, the tension in my well-earned sore muscles floats away and with it the tension in my mind. I feel waves of relaxation by just focusing on the sensation of stretch. It’s made me more aware of the pleasure my body can provide in all situations. I love yoga so much, I do it everywhere — on the dance floor or even in the middle of a sidewalk.
#5. You can’t be bad at it
The last reason I love yoga is that it’s not about what you look like but how you feel. For example, a person who can bend in half and only touch their knees is not “worse” at yoga than a person who can bend over and reach their toes. That’s not how it works.
If the person who can only reach their knees is focusing on leaning forward and reaching the exact point where they feel a stretch but it is not painful, that person is practicing yoga. The person who bends over and reaches their toes but doesn’t pay attention to their body is not practicing yoga, even though they may look like it to someone else.
The only way to be bad at yoga is to not try. And that’s the beauty in it. That’s what makes it so special in the ultra-competitive results-driven world we live in.
Yoga is the antithesis of our results-driven culture.
It’s not about what poses you get into, although it is nice to progress. It’s about being grateful for your body and fully experiencing how good it can feel to have one. It’s about pushing yourself to see what that body can do here and now. It’s about taking moments to stop and simply be. As long as you can keep a positive attitude and practice as much as you have time, you are a Yogi.
The same applies to life in general. Real success is not about how you look on the outside. The closer you can come to finding inner happiness, the more successful you are, regardless of what you appear to have.
“Life isn’t just about working hard and making progress. Life is also about balancing that out with enjoying the bounty and beauty and abundance and sensation. We need both.” — Fiji McAlpine, Chakra Two Flow
Both yoga and life are about learning to love and respect yourself now, wherever you are on your journey. To keep trying, stay focused, enjoy the challenge, and not let your ego get in the way.
Even when you fall on your butt.
