From Workouts to Spiritual Practice

Since 2012, I’ve tried many styles of yoga, and for the first five years, my relationship with yoga was rather superficial. From Bikram to sweaty Vinyasa and aerial yoga; the fast-paced, physically challenging practices drew me in. A turning point on my yoga journey (and in my spiritual growth) came in 2017, when I walked into a beautiful Balinese yoga studio that advertised itself as a center for traditional tantric hatha yoga. I asked at the front desk if they offered hot Vinyasa, and a teacher with bright gaze smiled at me and replied: "Listen, in yoga, you're not supposed to sweat."

At that point, my approach to yoga was still very physical, and I mostly saw it as a great workout. I had no idea about meditation or the subtler techniques of yoga, nor any understanding of how the state of the nervous system underlies the practice. Still, I gave the class a chance, and an hour and a half later, I walked out of the studio with a peace in my mind and a fullness in my heart that I had never experienced before. This experience ignited within me a fire that burns for the wisdom of the tradition.

At its best, yoga is a holistic system that encompasses all aspects of humanity—from the body and mind to deeper realms. Traditionally, its core is self-inquiry (svadhyaya) and the growing awareness of oneself and expanding consciousness.

Awakening the Inner Light through Yoga

Self-inquiry has two dimensions:

We can get to know the self with little s—explore our values, examine our beliefs, and recognize where different patterns of behavior and thought arise from, and so on. The practice helps us refine our personality and become better versions of ourselves. The deeper dimension of self-inquiry emerges as the practice deepens: in addition to the small self, we can become familiar with the Self with capital s — our highest self. In other words, we come to see and experience that part of ourselves which lies behind the narrative of "I" and the many layers of our identity. Who am I at my core, beneath all the roles and masks?

A beautiful analogy for deepening self-understanding is to think of us humans as lamps. A lamp has a shade, which may come in different shapes, colors, textures, and sizes—this part of the lamp makes each person unique. But at the heart of the lamp lies the light source, the bulb, that brings its uniqueness to life. Without the bulb, the shade would not shine as it does. As yogis, our goal is to connect with this inner light source; to let it illuminate all parts of ourselves and ignite us into life in our uniqueness.

The light source is also the part of us that connects us to each other and dissolves the illusion of separateness.

For the highest promise of yoga to be fulfilled, the practice doesn’t just include asana work, but other techniques of yoga: pranayama, bandhas, mudras, mantras, and, most importantly, meditation. Hatha yoga is a very systematic, thousands-of-years-old methodology that includes a clear map towards the individual’s inner light. The physical reality, of course, is an important part of being human, but there is so much more to us than flesh and bones wrapped in skin!