From East to West. How Yoga Got Lost In Translation.

As a five-year full-time yoga teacher in the States who recently completed a 300-hour training in India, I reflect on yoga's journey overseas and how it has lost its meaning.

Somewhere along the way, we have veered off the path. While distracted by narratives and perceptions of wellness, we have lost the truth. We have replaced what is with what could be, always keeping us in a state of effort to achieve or in achievement itself. But when it comes to yoga, there is nothing to gain.

Yoga got lost in translation when it became a practice that focuses so much on the body: the nervous system, the asanas, the alignment, the strength, the softness, the mobility, the flexibility, the list goes on… The desire to advance in these areas has become a common misconception of what the yoga practice is.

The pursuit of all Vedic traditions is to answer the question, “Who am I?” This is what yoga was created for. To understand who we are at our very core. Yoga is the stripping away of every narrative about ourselves that we have ever bought into. Taking off every layer one by one until we are bare naked as awareness itself.

If you have ever found yourself in contemplation of who you are, you’ve dipped your toes in yogic soil. Where you go from there and how you practice can and will look many different ways. Yoga is diverse, inclusive, and fully experiential.

Embodied movement and asanas (poses) can serve as a meditative practice to quiet the mind, peel back the narratives, and “get naked,” so to speak. But asanas are not yoga in and of themselves. Nor should they be done for gain. Yoga isn’t a workout or a stretch.

A workout is a workout. Stretching is stretching. Yoga is neither.

The more we fixate on the body meeting a certain standard, the more we identify as limited beings, which keeps us in a loop of samsara (suffering)—always seeking the next rung up the ladder and looking outside ourselves for fulfillment. 

It’s like when you are looking everywhere for your glasses, only to finally realize they were on your head the whole time. Yoga is the realization that you are already complete right now in this very moment. There is no activity to master; there is no tool to acquire that will help you realize it.

Yoga is a practice of letting go of all things and remembering who you are. 

It is important to me, as a Westerner, to take accountability for how I translate the practice of yoga.

And although "yoga teacher" is just another title that adds to the narrative. If I am to call myself a yoga teacher in this life, I am responsible for honoring the roots. I am translating a practice across cultures, hoping that the people I share it with can understand it and take it into their own lives. To live it in authenticity. I am grateful for the ways I am continuously challenged. For the past five years, I have poured all my energy and commitment into this practice, and I will continue to do so with an open heart and an open mind.

Om Tat Sat.