Can you have Yoga Without Asana?
What asana means, and how I yoga without it
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Four years ago I completed my yoga teacher training.
I can’t really remember who I was as a person before I started, and I can’t quite remember my reasons for doing it.
From what I do recall, shamefully, it was a rather superficial thing about seeking a job I could do on the side, and at the same time actually becoming better at yoga myself.
I wanted to do all the cool stuff like headstands and handstands in dramatic locations — and mega ego trip if I could teach that to others.
Getting the certificate was important to me.
The course itself changed all of that.
It changed me too.
Midway through it, I went into existential crisis and, to be brutally honest, I’m not sure if I’m truly out of it.
12 months of training had passed, and I still couldn’t do a headstand.
But worse, I found out beyond a shadow of a doubt that my chakras were well and truly fucked.
Of particular significance was my root chakra — which obviously represented my home, and my finances. That explained a lot.
But my solar plexus chakra was also a mess — my will power, my self-esteem, my courage, even my digestive system. On all levels, this chakra was legit screwed.
To make matters even worse, I’m pyrophobic too — afraid of fire. That’s the element of the solar plexus. How was I going to heal this one, then?
Simultaneously I started to gain hope — and it — that yoga could fix me.
Then there was the stuff about myself that I actually did know about already — like fear of public speaking.
Learning to be a teacher, to stand up in front of a class and talk, impart knowledge — that scared the heebie-jeebies out of me.
Yeah, I knew my throat chakra needed some work. But after my yoga teacher training, of course I no longer admitted to a fear of public speaking (glossophobia.) I could just say my Vishuddhi was out…
