When the first Yoga teachers introduced Yoga to the west, I am sure that they wanted Yoga to spread and be experienced by as many people as possible. BKS Iyengar, Patthabi Jois, Indra Devi, Vanda Skaravelli, those are the Yoga teachers that if you watch videos, see pictures or read their books, bring a great understanding of what experiencing Yoga entails. The focus on anatomy is not on the top of the list of the original teachers. The Yamas and Niyamas, Pranayama, the rest of the eight limbs of Yoga have a larger focus, especially in reference to experiencing Yoga. Of course, anatomy is important, but it is woven into the philosophy and understanding of why we do Asana, why we need to experience the full approach of the eight limbs of Yoga. In our modern times, there seems to be a misconception that experiencing Yoga through anatomy and Asana is the only way to experience Yoga. 

We are living a physical life, within a physical body. This is an absolute truth. However, we are more than just the physical body, we are full of emotions, thoughts and beliefs. We are conditioned and allow society to mould us. We have positive emotions and negative emotions, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes lasting for long periods. Our daily lives encompass more than just the physical. Yoga was not intended to simply be an exercise program. Yoga allows us to discover the deepest layers of who we are, to enable us to shatter beliefs that don’t serve us, to manage our emotions and thoughts. To keep our body that we experience life through healthy and strong, so that we may not be distracted by the body, but instead find our way deeper into True Nature, using the body as one of the means to get there.  

So much of Yoga gets lost when we don’t allow the depth of it to penetrate our experience. We are given the tools of Yama and Niyama, ethics, self-observances. We are given the tools of Pranayama, using breath to aid our experience.  We are given the tools of Pratyahara, allowing us to not be overtaken by our senses. We are given the tools of Dharana, singular focus. We are given the tools of Dhyana, meditation, allowing a deeper understanding of True Nature. We are given the tools of Samadhi, oneness or unity. With all those tools, Asana is only one of them. How can we achieve balance and unity within ourselves, when we focus on the one tool as the ultimate and override the rest of the tools?  

Perhaps if we were able to understand Asana is part of Yoga, not all Yoga, it would open our experience and our intentions toward Yoga and ourselves. Sadly, in our modern world, we don’t want the journey as much as we want results, and we fall back on the physical being the culmination of results. In no way am I proposing that there is a need or wanting to decrease the importance of Asana or its use in delving deeper into Yoga. But when it is simply all we are willing to experience, what benefit is it to pull ourselves further into the physical? To experience an even more physical life? To distract us from delving deeper, going further into who we are? (There are more than enough distractions in our modern world that do that already. We don’t need to add yet another one.) To make us slaves to the senses, the superficial experience of life?  

 What if we change our view of the physical to just one aspect of who we are, to one facet of the ever-changing experience of life? What if we change our view of Yoga to focusing first on how we can incorporate the other limbs of Yoga into our intentions and experience, and allowing the physical to follow. Yoga teaches us allowing and Being; what if we brought our physical selves to the practice to just Be, to allow the practice to take us where we need to go. In controlling the body, we feel that we can control our lives. What happens when the body is not in its optimal state, and we cannot do Asana until it is, and we have no control over the time it will take to bring us back to being able to experience the physical, do we give up on Yoga? Or do we focus on the other aspects of Yoga to carry us through until we can incorporate that one limb of eight limbs of Yoga, Asana.  

The choice of how much we take from Yoga and how we experience it is ultimately our choice. When we minimise such a rich set of tools to only one, and use Yoga as a means to an end to focus on the physical, all we are doing is preventing the depth of ourselves from coming through. And the beauty of the depth of us is a rich journey of discovery. What we look for in ourselves, fulfilment, peace, happiness, understanding, health, being the best version of ourselves we can be, these can all be discovered within a well-rounded Yoga practice. It is up to us to allow Yoga to take us there.