What is Advanced Yoga?
Advanced Yoga is a buzz word that’s often associated with things like arm balances, inversions, backbends, or deep twists & forward bends. I’m here to tell you that stuff is easy. Well, relatively easy.
Our physical practice is controllable. We can get on our mats each day and improve just by practicing. It’s straightforward in that way. Sure, we may have setbacks like injuries or illness, but we can always get back into the flow. With a good teacher, progress is guaranteed.
The real advanced yoga is the yoga of the mind. It’s less straightforward and more nuanced. It’s easy to philosophize and it’s harder to actualize. We can practice handstand daily, but how do we practice a self-realized mind?
We can meditate, but even meditation isn’t as simple. Often, we sit to meditate and we just silently suffer, watching the mind bounce from place to place, thought to thought, anxiety to judgment, like a monkey jumping from tree to tree. Where is the stillness?
It comes with time, yes. But it’s hard to truly drop into a meditation unless we’re well-rested, established in our seat, body is nourished, relationships are steady, and so on.
Meditation and yoga won’t fix our relationships by themselves. That’s why we have therapy. It also won’t cleanse our bodies by itself, which is why we have nutritionists, ayurvedic specialists, and even physical therapists. It won’t even connect us to the divine by itself, and that’s what we have prayer, japa, and the sacred texts for.
The key to all of this is balance. That’s the advanced yoga.
If we train handstands for 3 hours every day, we’ll surely get injured at some point. But if we train handstands for 20 minutes every day while cross training, eating well, resting, and finding joy, we’ll get there much faster and with less hardship.
Get yourself in therapy and watch your relationships improve faster than when you meditated for 3 hours each day. Get yourself on a proper nutrition plan and watch your body feel better than it did when you took 3 hot power yoga classes each day.
Advanced Yoga is finding balance in a world that’s anything but balanced. And if we can smile, be generous, and devote ourselves to something greater along the way, then we may even become Sva-Svami — the master of the self.
