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I will always remember my first yoga class. I never had any intention of taking such a class. Not at first, anyway. When I was nineteen, I just happened to see a group of people at my gym standing on their heads. I thought to myself, “How amazing! I want to do that!” and signed up for my first class. It was a Hatha Yoga class, and I did not realize that joining it would forever alter the direction of my life.
There was no standing on my head in that first class, but the impression of yoga as a spiritual practice was etched in my mind. While you might find this hard to believe now, I could not touch my toes in a simple forward fold. Instead of discouraging me from doing yoga, my lack of strength and flexibility inspired me to learn more. I found books and practiced at home until I found the Ashtanga Yoga lineage.
Then, when I was twenty-two years old, I joined a traditional Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series class, and that was the experience that solidified the change in my life. I wasn’t athletic or particularly physically fit, and I certainly had no idea what a lineage-based yoga practice was. But I kept practicing because of how I felt when I got off the mat. I also learned that just because you cannot balance in a pose does not mean you are not worthy of practicing yoga.
Yoga practice, especially Ashtanga yoga practice, is anything but easy. We all have met or will most likely meet failure right in our first class. Not only was I not very good at the asanas (poses), but I also was not good at failing or falling out of the asanas. Frustration and failure have a nasty habit of sneaking into your mindset, and they have the potential to really ruin your practice if you let them. The reality of staying inspired to practice yoga when you keep failing is exceptionally difficult. Struggle, adversity, and challenge bring duhkha in all its shapes and forms. You cannot expect to avoid failure, but what you can do is change the way you think about failure.
Yoga practice is a space where failure is welcome. Failure is the only way you can learn from yoga, because yoga isn’t about memorizing or perfecting the poses. It is a personal and spiritual journey that strengthens your mental abilities just as much as—if not more than—your physical form.
What asanas you do (or not) on the mat should not impact the way you feel about your practice. We all need a lesson in being a little bit nicer to ourselves. We cannot judge our success by our asanas; you can succeed at yoga even if you mess up some of the poses! Failing at a pose or two does not mean you are failing at yoga. The real success of the practice comes from the balance you find within yourself when you let go of all the overhanging—and sometimes unrealistic—expectations you put on yourself.
Are you, like me, a perfectionist who is afraid of failure? Fear of failure is a huge inhibition, both on the yoga mat and in your everyday life. This fear can stop you from achieving the things you want most in the world. When you let fear rule your actions, you trap yourself in an endless loop of fear and failure that can be difficult to break.
In a success-oriented society like ours, failure can be seen as a threat to our livelihood. Each of us will experience this fear more times than we can count. Rather than pushing us to succeed perfectly, yoga teaches us how to redefine success. When fear of failure and perfectionism kick in, we tend to focus obsessively on goals and results. Yoga instead focuses all our efforts on the process, and the journey opens the mind to be fully present and accept the reality of what exists.
I’m a yoga teacher now, but I will always be a student. To be a student of yoga means the mind is open and inspired to learn, to practice. The quest of yoga is to find nirodha, the Sanskrit word defined as “stillness and inner peace.” This inspiration is never stronger than at the very beginning of the journey. The concept of beginner’s mind was first presented by the Zen Buddhist teacher Suzuki Roshi, and it is the perfect attitude to hold throughout the journey of yoga.
Even after more than twenty years of yoga practice, I still have my own doubts when it comes to my abilities as both a student and a teacher. Instead of fighting these feelings, I have learned to acknowledge the doubt, fear, and discomfort and integrate these aspects of myself into both my practice and my life.
Remember—perfection does not exist, and no one will ever achieve it. What you can achieve is self-acceptance and a higher sense of self that is able to accept failure and learn new things because of it. This process of trying-failing-learning is the process-oriented thinking you need to be successful at yoga. Process-oriented thinking in your yoga practice gives you the freedom to not care about whether you achieve the pose and reduces your mind to a focus on the breath and the internal journey.
Truthfully, yoga is hard, process and all. I still find my practice challenging after all these years. Few things worth doing are easy, after all. We all come to yoga practice for different reasons, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Wanting to strengthen your body, open your mind, and improve your health are all great reasons to seek out a yoga studio. Yoga is not a fast and easy shortcut away from suffering. It is a slow and steady journey, and like all journeys, your yoga practice will come with its own deeply personal trials and tribulations. Your job is to unroll the mat and start again.
Excerpted from Accessible Ashtanga: An All-Levels Guide to the Primary and Intermediate Series by Kino MacGregor © 2024 by Kino MacGregor. Photographs by Yoandy Vidal and Osmani Tellez. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.
