Roughly speaking, from a Western perspective, there are three types of yoga in the sense of movement: those that are flow based where the movement is mostly constant and fluid, those that are stationary where stillness is emphasized, and those that are a mix between the two where there is usually somewhat of a warm up routine centered around casually cycling the body and limbs through a large amount of its range of motions before focusing on cultivating stillness in various postures. Vinyasa is mostly associated with the first, Iyengar with the second, and Hatha with the third. These of course are simplifications given that each teacher is different, with his or her practice often being a composition of many different forms. Nonetheless, it provides a jumping block for what follows.

From here we can say that what we are intending to do is to find a balance between action and inaction, between, passivity and activity, and between stillness/silence and motion. In tai chi and other martial arts this can be likened to the balance between yin and yang with yin being the more restive, passive, and encompassing force, and yang being the more aggressive (aggressive in the sense of sustainable passion and the ability to take action), penetrating, and solid force. In yoga this is symbolized by the word ‘hatha’ itself which is broken down into ‘ha’ and ‘tha’ with ‘ha’ referring to the sun and ‘tha’ referring to the moon, which means respectively the penetrating and powerful force of the sun and the passive/restorative power of the moon, or again, as the stillness of a more stationary style of yoga on the one hand and the dynamism of a more fluid and motion oriented yoga on the other. 

A good rule of thumb, for any yoga posture, is to engage everything needed to hold the pose correctly while letting go and relaxing any muscle that is not needed to hold the pose successfully.  In many ways this characterizes what one is trying to accomplish through a cycle of movements whether one is practicing a more dynamic style or a more stationary style. It is also characterizes an important way of existing in the world, i.e. staying engaged with those things that help one to flourish and letting go of all the unnecessary things that create anxiety and attachment. A few points however deserve mention in respect to aspects of stillness and motion that may prevent a person from finding more balance and calm in their practice:

The awareness and presence we nurture in our lives and through our practice, with our breath as our anchor, is aimed at proper discernment in order to keep a healthy and focused balance while avoiding the extremes of being too rigid on the one hand and too scattered on the other. When too rigid we become cut off from the dynamism and flow of life and movement unable to be dynamic and ecstatic. In bodily terms this means poor circulation and stagnancy within the body as a whole, which is always refreshed through innovative movement and change. 

When too scattered we lose the ability to stay grounded and centered, unable to move inward and connect to the stillness and peace that comprises our inner spirit and knowing. In bodily terms this means we are forever anxious and restless, too movement oriented in order to gather and cultivate the positive energies that grow from one’s practice. 

Yoga is a metaphor for how one lives their lives; one’s practice is a reflection of how they operate and engage with the world and how one engages with the world will reflect in how one practices. With this in mind it is easy to recognize from the standpoint of a teacher in front of a class, those students who are more or less too scattered or too rigid. Considering movement, many practitioners are constantly fidgeting, moving to and fro, doing whatever their body is asking for in the moment. The rationalization for this is something along the lines of one simply doing what they feel, doing what feels good, and being open to the moment. What’s lost on such practitioners is how such movement is bellied by a need to avoid stillness and all that often accompanies it when stillness occurs. Often the feelings that are driving us to move in a certain way are negative emotions from one’s past habituations, wounds, and fears emotions that ultimately keep one anxious, and ungrounded.

Yoga is not always a purely relaxing experience in this sense, nor should it be. What I mean is that through practicing yoga one begins working with ones body in ways that will release emotional responses and feelings that have become locked in the body through tension and repression. No person whatsoever is freed from such reactions, and so when one begins stretching it is only natural that any tension or energy that was built up becomes aggravated. This is a good thing because it means one is bringing into awareness, tensions and emotions that can then be let go of through the proper attitude and approach.

Since negative attitudes are often associated with the emotions that are being released, what occurs is that the individual sometimes becomes more stressed and begins judging his or her emotions along with yoga itself. But it is important to remember that yoga often evokes emotions, but it never provokes emotions. Yoga gently breaks down the barriers we’ve created as a response to the effects of the environment on our development.

In respect to those students who are too rigid, much of the same in way of underlying feelings and rationalizations remain true with slightly different foundations manifesting in slightly different ways that nonetheless usually comedown to the same underlying fears. The rigid person is fixed in place, unwilling to move dynamically because they are cut off from various parts of their body. Here, having control is the underlying mechanism for maintaining safety and security.

Just above I used the phrase “cut off from one’s body” to characterize the rigid practitioner, but in truth both the student who is excessively rigid and the student who is excessively scattered are cut off from their bodies, lost to thought, and more or less in their heads. One must not assume that the person who is able to move constantly and comfortably at will is grounded in their bodies simply because the external appearance gives the impression that this is the case. Of course there is a degree of truth to it, but the reality is that such a person can be just as much, if not more, “stuck up in their heads” than the person who finds spontaneous movement difficult.  One can say something similar about the rigid practitioner who gives the impression of control and groundedness but who lives a life characterized by incessant worry and an inability to be flexible and dynamic. And sometimes both aspects manifest where there is an insecurity around never feeling truly comfortable in a pose because of thought patterns built around the assumption that one is never doing the pose as good as they could be, i.e. one never feels good enough. 

The ability to discern between what is an “authentic” or grounded movement and what is merely a perpetuation of being scattered requires the cultivation of accurate discrimination. Through accurate discrimination one learns to make fine distinctions between what arises, feeling into them from a place of intuitive knowing, and compiling a sense for what the body is doing. These discernments are also important when it comes to using yoga for healing from injury and for challenging the body to try difficult poses that one might be reluctant to try.

For instance, if one comes into yoga with an injury it will be important to feel into certain postures and movements in order to discern that what arises in way of discomfort has to do with a muscle or group of muscles simply being weak and underused, the breaking up of scar tissue, or legitimate pain related to an imbalance, incorrect pose, or injury. In respect to challenging the body, one may be reluctant to do inversions such as headstand, especially if such a movement is entirely new to a person. In such a case there will be a healthy degree of fear at first that sometimes will cloud one’s judgment so that one feels they are unable to move a certain way when in fact they can. Related to this is the fear of being reinjured that often prevents a person from participating in movements that are more reasonable than one may actually feel, movements that will be necessary if proper range of motion is to be regained. 

By now it should be apparent that the mind and body act in tandem and that anything one feels has some sort of corresponding thought or thought pattern to it and vice versa. This is important since, as was mentioned above, many people trick themselves into thinking they are outside of their heads simply because they are doing what they feel in their bodies. This is argued in the belief that they are escaping a society that is overly rational and thinking oriented, and although there is a degree of truth to this, such activity is still often caught up in the very duality that is the larger problem. What is important is right intelligence or pure intelligence as characterized in yoga psychology by buddhi. In the West one might call it logos. Thus, yoga is the cultivation of right intelligence, associated with and grounded in, a kind of intuition that generates healthy and authentic movement in the moment.

As a parallel we can consider how in certain Buddhist schools, walking meditation and sitting meditation are equally emphasized. Here it is not so much the fact that one is a more movement oriented practice and one is more stillness oriented practice. What is being cultivated in regard to both is a degree of presence that is constant despite the comings and goings of life. Similarly, in yoga it is not so much movement or stillness as much as the degree of presence and focus in respect to what one is doing, whether being in headstand for five minutes or working through a set of sun salutations. The goal is to be in the moment without being distracted by one’s thoughts. 

Presence is important to cultivate because it allows one to be tuned into what is good for the body, mind, and spirit in each particular moment. Without being grounded, one can give into thought patterns around what one thinks or feels they should be doing as opposed to what is actually helpful in that moment; one may be pushing themselves unnecessarily out of a false sense of expectation around having to be the best, or being able to “toughen” through a pose, or fully elongate in a certain way. 

Without presence we may become addicted to stretching in an intense way. That is, we begin yoga with certain muscles being tight and so in stretching them there is a feeling of intensity as the muscles are used, lengthened, and strengthened. But we may become used to that feeling and always look for it in every stretch and believe that we are not working hard enough because we are failing to feel the intensity when in truth, since we have been stretching regularly, the muscle is now more loose, and the intense feeling is therefore no longer there for now. 

Presence is what allows a person to be grounded in the life they are as opposed to simply the living person. Without this distinction it becomes easy to find one’s self lost in illusory intentions and false goals; we walk into the yoga studio split off from our deeper sense of self. From my own experience, and from watching others, it is easy to see how most practitioners walk into a studio already at odds with their body. In such cases the body is an adversary that needs to be conquered, controlled, and pushed into a more attractive state than the one we perceive. This often has a lot to do with crafting an attractive image, and having a perfect body, but it also involves a conflict with one’s repressed feelings and emotions. 

Many people walk into a yoga class with an agenda concerning what they want to fix or work on concerning their bodies. It is not that one cannot have things physically they want to focus on or poses they want to become efficient in. But there is a difference between walking into a class and focusing on what one’s body is asking for as opposed to what one thinks one needs to fix. The former involves a kind of connectedness to one’s life where the physical and internal are one, whereas that latter involves a split between such aspects. 

In a yoga class a person can feel their need to control arise, or his or her anxiety about being seen from a certain angle, or a lack of self compassion stemming from a perceived lack of ability. These “arsisings” are a gift of yoga, and they arise so that one can be with them from a place of compassion, working through them so they can become integrated into a wholeness that consists of mind, body, and spirit. 

In this sense yoga is just as psychological as it is physical. A conscientious practice makes us aware, not just of one’s physical ailments but of one’s mental tendencies and thought patterns. In yoga, one watches both arise. One takes note of when they become frustrated, how they react to seeing others do a pose they themselves cannot, how one reacts when they can do a pose that others cannot, how one reacts to being given advice, what emotions come up when being in certain postures that may put one in a vulnerable position. 

Again, the body holds memory and so it is inevitable that as one works with it, past emotions and traumas will be brought up. When these and the accompanying thought patterns arise, it is essential that one cultivates an intention to work with these as well, of giving them attention in the moment, and then of taking these discoveries to one’s reflection or meditation practice for further examination. 

All of these “arisings,” whether physical, mental, or spiritual, are aspects that a teacher will not always be able to see, and hence, one must cultivate their own home practice to be with them. I hear a lot of people say, “I do yoga quite frequently but not on my own. It’s just too difficult.” This is silly, especially since yoga is ultimately a personal quest. But even if one is not interested in the psychological or spiritual side of yoga, there is an entirely important physiological reason to develop one’s own practice: No teacher will ever be able to know one’s body as well as one’s self. An instructor may ask individually before hand what people would like to focus on, but this is entirely different from being in the moment with one’s body from pose to pose, in sync with what one needs, which is something that can change in an instant depending on how one completes the previous pose.

Much of this is grounded in cultivating an awareness of a practice that moves from the gross to the subtle; one gradually moves from the external to the internal, processing subtle forms of reaction, developing a sensitivity to sensations at an energetic and deeply intuitive level. In this process, we exchange idle thought for intelligence (intuition) and reactionary feelings for pure sensation. This comes to the fore in the case of balance; this is balance in the sense of how it was described earlier, leveling out yin and yang, “ha” and “tha,” etc. but all also in the way of actually balancing in poses such as vrksasana (tree pose). 

When one balances one sets the intention of balancing. This intention is not thinking, nor is it a thought. Rather, it is an intelligent decision in the moment to act. For this to occur, one must be feeling into their body, remembering that thought is always absent from the present moment, and the present moment is where one is balancing. One does not need to think in order to balance; one is focused, in the moment, at one with the sensations that are allowing one to stand in the moment. 

As much as an instructor is important and essential to practicing, it is just as important for any person interested in yoga to start a personal practice as soon as possible, especially if there is a desire to someday become an instructor. In the end this will only make one a better teacher. This does not mean that one should ever stop going to yoga classes. But a yoga class should reinforce and encourage one’s own personal practice as opposed to being the sole way by which one practices.