Yoga: Flex your mind, not your muscles

Many will tout the positive aspects Yoga brings to your heart rate, blood pressure or its magic in making depression disappear. While all these benefits stand scientifically documented, they would not be why I would advise you to start practicing. I’ve come to find that the best benefit I can take from the ancient Indian art, is improving my approach to life.

To the uninitiated, Yoga brings to the mind a bunch of people in a studio standing and sitting in awkward positions. While you will definitely find yourself in some awkward positions, your physical posture is but a small part of your practice.

Yoga seeks to connect your mind and body through your breath. In its simplest sense, Yoga is a series of postures that you perform in a particular sequence for a particular amount of time, with the timing counted in the number of breaths you take. Yoga breathing is a special technique of breathing, where you close your mouth, breathe through your nose and breathe with sound.

Some of those who hit the mat for the first time, especially when coming from an exercise background, try to achieve postures by pushing themselves into them by pressing on, and perhaps straining muscles in the process. You will find that it would make for faster progress if you relax into a posture rather than try to force your way through.

Yoga, however relaxed, does not lack intensity. You will need to power through some postures.

But do not confuse intensity and strength with force.

I never sweat as much as as I do when I’m on the Yoga mat, neither when my feet is pounding the treadmill nor when I was negotiating my last hill climb on the bike at the gym. Make no mistake, Yoga is intense.

I’ve had a number of friends tell me they need to either lose weight or get fit before starting Yoga. This is akin to saying you want to get fit before starting to jog. Yoga will give you motivation, put you in the mindset, as well as physically help you get fit. Don’t fuss over it, just do it and everything will sort itself out. Yoga is fit for all levels of fitness and all body shapes, you will never start off doing it perfectly anyway.

It takes three years, on average, of committed practise to perfect the primary series, that is the first set of postures a Yogi should undertake. Most people do not advance beyond these if they are doing it casually.

“Do your practice and all is coming.” are the famous words of Sri Pattabhi Jois, the man who is credited with keeping the Yoga tradition alive and teaching it to the west, to later spread to the rest of the world. And they encompass what you need to do. Don’t think too much, just get on the mat and start.

If you lead a busy or hectic lifestyle don’t try to squeeze in your practise into your schedule. You need to give it its time. Once you start, you would not pause to take phone calls or end your practise early because you are running late. If you cannot find time for regular sessions then do it at your own pace. As my teacher once told me “You cannot stress about Yoga, it defies the whole purpose.” That said, if you can’t arrange your schedule to have a full session, don’t give up, doing something is better than nothing.

I’ve found the most challenging part to be training the mind. A good session starts with some meditation. Clear your mind and focus on your breath. Bring yourself to the present. Find the stillness within and then begin. Once I start I am not thinking about anything, and when thoughts do come, especially negative ones, I find myself losing synchronisation of breath and posture, or even more visibly losing my balance. I pause for a couple of breaths, purge my thoughts and get back on track.

You may find that every now and then as you start taking on new postures, one of them will come and challenge you — you will struggle and an emotional issue will perhaps rise to the surface as a result, clouding your thoughts. There is a connection between this issue and your ability to perfect this posture. Solving one will help you solve the other.

For example, in my early attempts at doing a headstand, every time I tried to kick my legs up in the air I would fall back down. No matter how many times or how hard I tried turning myself upside down, I always needed someone to support my legs in mid-air and place them against the wall.

At one point, I suddenly became aware that it was my fear that was holding me back. I was afraid I would snap my neck or fall and hurt myself. Standing head down and legs up was an unusual position for me, and I was constantly thinking of what could go wrong.

A breakthrough came one day when I realised that there is no physical reason why I cannot flip myself over against the wall. My legs are strong enough for the push and my body is light.

I talked myself through all the possibilities, until I was convinced that no matter what happens I wouldn’t really hurt myself. I then focused my energy on pushing myself up, not to the wall, but to flip myself over. I figured the best way to remove the fear of flipping over is to actually go through it.

Once, twice and on the third try my legs were up against the wall. No flipping over, no falling to the sides, no snapping necks. Everything worked perfectly fine. After that, every time I attempted a headstand I was successful, save for a few times when my foot slipped or I got distracted mid-way.

There is a lot you will learn about yourself and your approach to life inside the studio. My next challenge is to take what I’m learning in the studio outside, and start applying it.

And this is, essentially, what Yoga is slowly teaching me: If you live with action and intensity, do what you need to do while relaxing, then all good will come in due course.

– By Amr El Beleidy

Amr El Beleidy practices at Ashtanga Yoga Egypt studio in Zamalek. For more details, check out the studio’s Facebook page.

The Breathing Room in Maadi offers “Mysore” classes which, not unlike Amr’s practice, teach Ashtanga Yoga that is not cued through the class, and where an instructor is present to assist you. You can take the whole class or go and work on some postures that you may be struggling with.

On the Mat studio in Zamalek offers different forms of Yoga, including Ashtanga.

About the Writer: Amr El Beleidy is a travel writer, blogger, an engineer by training and an entrepreneur, with a masters of science in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial, London. Follow his thoughts via his blog and on Twitter.