Yoga practice + your ego
Like, I’m sure, many yogis, I gravitated towards yoga partly because I have always been flexible – and isn’t it nice to be good at things? Yoga can make you feel amazing in so many ways – sometimes that’s managing to leave your brain completely, and to just be completely in the moment and in tune with the world. Sometimes we can feel amazing because we just nailed that handstand, or to get that foot a little higher in a standing split.
I don’t think there is necessarily anything ‘wrong’ with having pride in your abilities, especially when they are hard won, but fighting off my yoga ego has been one of the hardest parts of the practice for me, especially as I become more ‘advanced’ in my personal practice.
Unfortunately, the ego is a pretty constant companion for most of us – so how to practice leaving the ego out of yoga?
1. Recognise that your ego is not the real you
Your ego is more like a shadow of you – it can influence and affect you, but you are separate from it.
2. Practice being non-judgemental
Yoga is a lifelong practice – I think this is the most important thought that I continually come back to. I don’t need to perfect that posture now – I have my whole life to immerse myself in my physical yoga practice, and the journey and the self discovery are the parts that actually change and improve us.
3. Comparison is futile + fatal
You will never have the most advanced practice. There will always be someone whose urdhva dhanurasana is more bendy and upright, someone who can hold headstand for what seems like years. No one else’s journey hinders yours, and no one else’s skill makes yours less. Tough one to swallow, but try to just let that stuff go.
If someone on the mat next to you were struggling to find their way into a posture, you would have compassion for them – try to find the same compassion for yourself.
4. Don’t give yourself excuses
You may have injuries, you may have a busy schedule – whatever limits your yoga practice, stop telling yourself the story about it, and work around it. Acknowledge your strengths, accept your weaknesses and practice to the best of your ability.
5. Connect to the whole
By spending energy wanting things to be different, or on comparing yourself to someone else – what you’re doing is separating yourself from others. Yoga literally means ‘union’ to join, to connect. Don’t cheat yourself of that.
6. Be grateful
Not all days are good days. That’s okay. Be grateful for what you have, for the time you can make available to yourself, and for the small things.
7. Don’t make yoga the only thing
If yoga and asana practice is your only identity, then it’s easy to get hung up on this posture or that posture, or to miss the point. Your self-worth needs to be based on all aspects of your life, not just how advanced your practice is – and this is another one that I definitely struggle with in particular.
I think the main overriding factor to come back to, again, and again – and something that I am constantly surprised by, is that you can tell your ego to shut the fuck up when it’s getting out of hand. Silencing the poisonous narrative in your head is so helpful, and just to remind yourself that you are not your worst self, and that you are doing your best, and to take a step back and a deep breathe.
How do you find that your physical yoga practice intersects with and affects the ways that you think, and practice yoga in your life?