5 Signs Your Yoga Practice is Working

Amy Thompson photography

If you came to this page expecting things like “You’re doing a handstand in the middle of the room” or “You’ve just hooked your ankle behind your neck”…you and I are… not. on. the. same. wavelength.

While the overt milestones of modern asana practice can be temporarily exciting…they are, like all things, only that—temporary. AND they are superficial. Even Patañjali warns “advanced” practitioners that the siddhis* (superpowers attained by “advanced” practitioners along the yogic path) represent obstacles in and of themselves…so we should not attach to these stand-out moments of accomplishment either. (My modern-speak interpretation of sutra 3.38.*)

So if I’m not counting a handstand or flexibility as an indicator of whether or not my yoga practice is “working,” how will we measure its efficacy?

In my experience practicing, studying, and teaching, I’ve found that the measurements to determine if a practice is “working” are a bit more subtle than the gross physical form and have far more to do with the mind—

1 You’re questioning everything you eat.

2 You’re questioning everything you buy...and then throw away.

3 You’re questioning who you’ve chosen to spend your time with.

4 You’re questioning why some people have so much while others have so little.

The bottom line is—

5 You’re questioning...EVERYTHING—including the very nature of reality.

I’ve gone and done it haven’t I—I’ve offered a bunch of scenarios that feel generally…uncomfortable.

For me, I know the practice is really working when I find myself spending more time in the in-between space—that is, the space of the QUESTIONING.

🌏 Yogis are going to save the world, because we’ve committed ourselves to the QUESTIONING—to the process of excavating, scrutinizing, and unpacking the contents of human experience—that which otherwise left un-exacavated, un-scrutinized, and un-unpacked (😆) would be permitted to continue on simply as “the way things are.” As a collective, we’ve arrived to that point of no return-that point where “the way things are” is so glaringly…not working.

Remember Neo in The Matrix? In the same way, he arrives to that point of no return—that point where “the way things are” is so glaringly…not working for him or for anyone else.

The 2-minute conversation between Morpheus and Neo does a decent job of packaging the enormous concept of getting to the root of human experience—the question of What’s actually going on here?— into something digestible.

By the end of the scene, Neo has turned down the blue pill (the succumbing to the external, the superficial, the illusion that yogis call maya—the mindset that accepts the status quo as “the way things are”). He’s taken the red pill (the commitment to figure out what reality actually is)—as a practitioner, he’s committed himself to the QUESTIONING.

💊 Which color pill will you take?

💫 Sending love, light, and hugs from,

Marisa

*Nerdy foot note: In the third chapter of the Yoga Sutras, Patañjali was specifically referring to siddhis (yogic superpowers) such as levitation, invisibility, knowledge of planetary movements, and a laundry list more that he lays out in order. I chose physical “superpowers” like inversions and a-typical physical range of motion to serve as modern-day, more relatable examples of what a yogic “superpower” in 2024 might look like.