Balance in a Yoga Practice
(it’s not about standing on one foot)
10/2/20263 min read
We have all experienced what a great yoga class feels like. Class ends and you feel lighter and focused. Sometimes you don’t even want to leave your mat, wanting to stay in the yoga glow. When you experience a good yoga class, it is often because the class has offered a well-balanced experience. What is balance in a yoga class? Balance in a class will mean a class that integrates the three components of mind, body and breath.
At the simplest example, balance means that whatever poses the teacher offers on the right side of the body will be offered on the left side of the body. (Unless the teacher forgets a pose or a side. We’ve all been there!)
Movements are also balanced as we move through a variety of seated, table top, kneeling, and standing poses. We include forward folds, back bends and side bends, and, of course, balancing poses standing on one foot or arm balances on hands only with one or both feet off the mat.
But a well-balanced class is more than right side and left side.
A class should offer a balance of times of stillness to find inward awareness and times of moving and holding the body in shapes to provide sensation in part of the body. When holding a twist or bend in one part of the body and feeling sensation in that part of the body, do you ever notice the part of the body that is not feeling the sensation? Yoga calls this the balance between effort (sthira) and ease (sukha). Part of the body is “working” while the rest of the body is taking a supporting role of stability: helping the body hold the shape, yet at ease. (Try relaxing your face into a smile in boat pose sometimes.)
For more about effort and ease, you may review this article.
The balance between work and rest is also found through taking conscious rest in Savasana at the end of a yoga practice. Conscious rest is just as important as all the twisting and stretching on the mat.
Is this all there is to balance? No, yoga teaches us to practice balance off the mat.
Balance in yoga goes beyond what happens in a class. Thinking about a yoga practice over a longer period, we want to have a consistent practice in order to observe the body and mind changing from day to day and longer. Progress is not in a straight line, there are days when practice is easy, light and effortless. There are days when we don’t feel like practicing. Some lineages say to do a practice anyway to observe the mind and body when it does not feel like being on the mat. Other lineages will say that it is OK to take a day off. Maybe taking a walk in nature is what is needed that day. That’s your preference.
As a person engages in an ongoing yoga practice – and by this I am referring to more than just a physical asana practice, yoga is also practiced off the mat – we seek to develop an attitude of non-attachment about our yoga practice and about life in general. Non-attachment is a sense of doing the best you can and not being overly concerned about outcomes.
We seek a balance between practice and non-attachment as stated in Sutra 1.12 of the Yoga Sutras.
Practice with too much attachment will drive you crazy with worry about constant improvement and times the practice did not go well.
Non-attachment without practice is just flailing about. A yoga practice still requires work, it is not just going through the motions. While practicing yoga asana, pranayama or the ethical behaviors (yamas and niyamas) we go in with intention and awareness. We can control the work we put in, but cannot always control the outcome. Non-attachment is the ability to not obsess about the outcome.
We feel lighter when we practice non-attachment. The ego is not involved. Sutra 1.2 tells us that yoga calms the fluctuations of the mind. Smoothing these fluctuations (chitta vritti) is a form of balance we seek on and off the mat.
Balance in life between practice/work and non-attachment to the outcomes may make us feel lighter, and so we may actually be able to stand on one foot a little easier next time.