What to Expect from Your Yoga Practice

by Baxter

Several times a year, a particular query is posed to me by one of my students and it goes something like this: I have been practicing yoga for many years, advancing in my ability to do intermediate and sometimes advanced poses. I have been very healthy up to this point. I thought that if I did this and ate a healthy diet that I would stay healthy into my older years. Yet I just found out I have X, and I am confused and somewhat disappointed. I did not think this sort of thing would happen to me. Can I expect my yoga practice to resolve this issue?

Oh, does my heart go out to you! I totally understand where this perception comes from. It seems that in an insidious and unspoken way, we have come to expect that yoga is a kind of protective force field from the normal aging process. After all, our newspapers and magazines are constantly touting the health benefits of a regular yoga practice. And indeed, hatha yoga done regularly can help and slow down some of the usual changes that can happen in the course of a normal lifetime. But I, too, have had this encounter with the reality of my own mortality while in the midst of my yoga, and at first I was very disillusioned. 

Yet just a brief look into the history of important “enlightened” teachers of yoga in the 19th and 20th centuries reveals that despite reaching the pinnacle of yoga’s promised effects, some of these men died at surprising young ages. Yoga, despite the encouraging words from the Hatha Yoga Pradipika about longevity and destroying death, does not change the fact that we all age, get sick and die, as the Buddha observed on his first visit outside his cloistered youth in the palace.

Dry River Bed by Brad Gibson

This is why I believe we need to look deeper at the underlying goals of yoga that we can find in the Yoga Sutras and other important texts. They all talk of a higher psycho-spiritual aspiration that is the overriding objective of a deep and enduring practice: the union of our individual spirit (however you define that) with a kind of universal consciousness (however you define that!). Along the way, if you practice as guided by the tradition and your teacher, other beneficial side effects often occur: clearer insight into how things really are in your world, mental clarity on other issues, a deeper abiding sense of peace and interconnectedness with others and the world as a whole, and even a better sense of your purpose in life. 

Does that mean the Hatha Yoga practice cannot help with some healing and have other possible beneficial effects on your health, even with the arrival of an unwanted condition? Of course not!   We have featured many of the ways yoga can improve health in just a few short months. And even an experienced practitioner can have more to learn. So it may be time to find that teacher who can help guide you on this next part of your journey. There is nothing like working one on one with a gifted yoga teacher to open up new possibilities for you. 

And, finally, to get a truly amazing insight into this very phenomena, check out Esther Meyer’s essay in the collection of essays entitled Will Yoga and Meditation Really Change My Life? edited by Stephen Cope.