Why do you practice challenging poses? Is it the thrill of accomplishment? Is it because your body is getting stronger and more flexible? Is it just because it is a challenge? I’m sure everyone has a slightly different reason, and for every one of us the list of challenging poses is different. A pose that challenges me may be different from one that pushes you around the yoga mat. But maybe we can agree on some of the reasons that we have for putting our whole selves into a pose. My number one reason for diving in deep is for the sheer pleasure of it. I just want to have fun.
If you don’t take along the intention of having fun with challenging poses, you likely will not do them. Because they are difficult, many people find that they get frustrated or start to think they are too weak, or not flexible enough. They might even begin to believe they can never do a certain pose. While that end sentence may be true, all the fun of just trying to do the pose is my point. Stacey and I are currently working on a press-up handstand. We keep trying and trying out new ways of working it, and then we keep trying it again. The whole time, we bring along a determination to play hard. When having fun is the game plan, it doesn’t matter if you ever ‘get’ a pose. Plus, you just never know…(Of course I should take this opportunity to point out that Asana Diagnostics was born because of this mad desire for everyone to have fun working through poses. Spread the Joy, I say.)
Reason Number 1: Joy
Everyone’s fun is something different. For me fun is all wrapped around the effort, the continued effort of trying one thing and then another to gain access to a pose. Curiosity, leads the way here and my brain gets quite a work out as I work deeply within. Progress for me is success and so I don’t have to actually get to the end goal of anything to experience complete happy satisfaction.
Bottom line is this attraction to joy is the main driver for all human beings. We all just want to be happy. If I find great joy in working hard, laughing with my mat mates, moving the marker down the field, then why not continue to practice intensely? Here’s the thing about having fun. It’s infectious. If you see someone in class or at a workshop going all out practicing something, even if they can’t ‘do’ the final pose, but they are having fun, you are more likely to just jump in and give it a go. I’ve seen too many times people holding back because they were embarrassed about their inability to do something. But if you enthusiastically choose to try ‘just for fun’, you usually end up having some of that…FUN.
I’ve practiced with complete seriousness. And now I’m serious about having fun. I’m having fun and Joy is my mat mate. My practice wasn’t’ always so intense, but I’ll save that story for another time. I think it is fun to go all out pulling apart a pose to feel it every which way in my body, or timing poses or playing with props, practicing alone, practicing with friends, with music, with no music. When we produced our first Asana Diagnostics video, we were at the end of the film and I was doing the ‘closing’ or very last segment. We don’t work with a script, so when my last line came out, “If you’ve just had fun along the way, then that’s been our only goal”, we decided it was a keeper. It’s totally an appropriate tagline as it highlights and underscores the number one reason to practice challenging pose:
Have fun!
