Yoga Is For Every Body

Many people have fixed ideas about what physical body type is suitable for a yoga practice. Yoga postures are taught to students to enrich there well being and there are thousands of postures that will fit everyone’s needs.

Yoga has been taught to every type of body type which includes tall, short, fat, thin, weak and the disabled. Every body type has benefited in one way or another from yoga. There is no perfect yoga body, but yoga is perfect for every body.

Fear prevents a lot of people from taking that first step into a yoga studio. The perception is yoga is a “cult” or they do those contorted moves and everyone is a pretzel! All yogi’s practice without competition or comparison of others. You will never see a mirror located within a yoga classroom. Without competition, we take pressure off of ourselves by releasing our thoughts of inferiority in our practice. The practice is for you, for your growth, development and health.

Yoga is a competitive exercise where everyone WINS. Winning is not about who does the best yoga posture but about learning to do the best asana for your body at that given moment. If you wish to compare yourself to another student then it is for the purpose of learning. Watching a more advanced student can be source of inspiration and encouragement. Practice to learn and grow, not to compete. Yoga is one of those exercise activities where everyone always wins.

Yoga is so much more than a physical discipline. It requires a mental concentration where you are focused on the moment. A yoga student is learning mentally, physically and spiritually as they progress through the postures. Our minds can place limitations on our practice as much as our bodies do. The body may feel it can progress but the mind is distracted and our movements become rigid. That is why it is imperative to involve both the mind and body connection during your yoga practice where physical and spiritual growth will occur.

The bottom line with any exercise activity is sensitivity to your body, balance and learning to listen what will be the most productive and healthy for you. There is never a perfect body or a perfect mind, if everything was perfect, then imperfection would never be part of the growth. Some of our perfect lessons come from our errors.