It’s Just Yoga

Also, everything.

Over the years, people in yoga classes have often asked “what else” I do. Specifically, they wonder whether I do ballet, gymnastics, or some such thing. My reply: “Just yoga.”

For more than two decades now, just yoga.

Usually twice a day. But all of it. Especially slow practices alone, with body and breath. Especially the parts at a subtle edge. Especially the parts that allow space for spirit…and take that off the mat, into the world.

Even when I’ve played with other things for a while — CrossFit or boxing, for instance — that’s all yoga too, to me. To me, yoga is everything, everywhere.

It, along with Taoism and certain threads of Buddhism, is my connection to all that is. My lens for understanding self, others, Universe. My barometer for knowing whether something is helpful or unhelpful. Skillful or unskillful. Kind or unkind.

It encompasses everything — spirituality, physicality, breath work, emotional work, relationship work, shadow work, inner child work, manifestation work, work as livelihood, ethical investigation and development, love.

All of it. For short, I call it “the practice.” For me, it’s just yoga.

So, I continue practicing, with asana, pranayama, meditation, and svadhyaya at the core.

Asana, the physical practice, is familiar to most these days. Pranayama, or breath work, increasingly so. The particular forms of seated meditation I weave into that draw more from Buddhist teachers, though meditation is absolutely central to yoga as well (the point of it, really).

And svadhyaya is self-study. Comprised of sva, meaning self or the human soul, and adhyaya, meaning lesson or reading, svadhyaya encourages us to know ourself and our patterns.

I’m skimming over these in a cursory, far from complete way. But while I’m at it, I’ll mention the yamas and niyamas too.

The yamas are parameters for ethical conduct, including non-harming in thought, word, or action; truthfulness; non-stealing; celibacy, or “right use of energy”; and non-hoarding, or non-possessiveness.

The niyamas are observances for skillful living and being, including cleanliness, contentment, discipline, the aforementioned practice of self-study, and isvara pranidhana — surrender to something bigger than ourselves.

They too are at the heart of yoga and life as a yogi. Without them, at least for me, there’s no point to any of it.

The particular, always emerging manifestation of practice in my own life holds them close, while at the same time leaning into Buddhism and Taoism and their guidance for kind, simple, conscious living.

This particular tapestry wasn’t intentional — my primary teacher in spirituality and, well, life just happens to be Buddhist. My primary spiritual guidebook is the Tao Te Ching. And yoga was my entry into body, breath, and spirit.

It all comes together beautifully. It’s all, in the end, the same.

In this, home practice is essential (my sole form of practice these days). So is always practice — most especially off the mat. I actually don’t recall the last time I practiced on a mat other than yoga class; at home, I use the floor.

More broadly, of course, I mean living yoga, expressing it through body-mind-spirit and breathing it into existence in the world and with the world.

That said, the gratitude I hold for past classes and for yoga teachers and other teachers runs deep.

I don’t consider all yoga teachers I’ve practiced with “my teachers” (at least not any more than we’re all each others’ teachers). But a handful of them are, and they are with me daily.

Years and even decades after their classes, I practice to their words, presence, guidance. Remembered and treasured in body, mind, and heart, they are always there and each have things to teach me.

As with other teachers — spiritual and otherwise — I am forever amazed at my good fortune. The through line of my life includes finding the most perfect teachers at the most perfect times.

They shaped my being and becoming. They guided my path and saved me. They are the reason my entire story has unfolded thusly.

Words are not enough. In and from my heart, a deep, reverent bow.

Also, yoga. Just yoga.

Thank you for reading. I’m a doctor of Chinese Medicine and write about sobriety and soulful living. Find all my links here: