Yoga and prejudice

“I want to stay here, to be here, in my mind and in my body. Not to be convinced that I need to fly away somewhere far above. That’s why I think Yoga is just not meant for me.”

This is what a beloved friend of mine told me a couple of days ago. For anyone practicing Yoga this sounds frankly astonishing: everybody who knows what Yoga is all about will probably smile at this and then, as I did, think of all the strange prejudices that circulate about Yoga. Someone thinks it is a religion, someone else that to practice you need to have a perfectly flexible body, others that it is a too still and soft discipline, many people believe it is extremely boring because you have only to sit in silence for more than an hour while nothing is happening… And what is incredible about this is: most of these people actually never took a Yoga class.

It is true: there are extremely still classes, there are challenging advanced poses, some practitioners live Yoga as a religion, sometimes sitting still in meditation isn’t that fun… but this is only a part of the story. There are also tough Yoga styles, easy poses and rhythmic vinyasas, many teachers practicing with music in the background, and during meditation often extraordinary things happen...

There are prejudices about almost everything in this world, and Yoga isn’t an exception. What I think we as Yoga teachers and practitioners can do is to communicate that Yoga is a discipline, an art, that stretches upon many different aspects of life, and which, as life, is extremely diversified and colourful. You can find many different styles and approaches, you can nourish your body and your soul, you can take some parts and leave others, you don’t need to accomplish to any “musts”. Yoga is not necessarily for everybody, and maybe once you've tried you don’t like it, and that’s ok, no doubt. But sometimes people who could love it just don’t give themeselves the chance to discover this because of all those prejudices mentioned above. Let’s give those people the possibility to give a real glance inside this ancient and constantly renewed practice, without forcing them into something but simply exposing them the wide range of possibilities that Yoga offers.