Nonduality in Asana: a deeper, decolonized practice

Lately I’ve been diving back into physical practice, and taking a lot of yoga classes. There’s one teacher whose work I genuinely respect and enjoy, except for the moments when they say, during particularly challenging poses: “fight the good fight!” It’s meant in a motivational, ‘mind-over-matter’ kind of way, but to me it frames the practice as a battle of wills between body and spirit, which is a valid classical approach to yoga that is just… not my jam. Part of that is preference and part of it is philosophy, and today we’re talking about the latter.

From the Tantric perspective, your body isn’t an obstacle to be overcome in order to connect to spirit; the two are already and inextricably connected. In fact, they are one and the same. The divine permeates rather than transcends the physical realm. Bliss (enlightenment, ecstasy, freedom, whatever you want to call it) is attainable in this lifetime, in this body.

Applied to asana practice, this encourages us to move with joy, and guides our effort toward steadiness and suppleness, rather than strain and rigidity. The aim of asana is not to perform a particular external geometry, but to practice an internal liberation allowing energy and breath to move freely.

Conversely, the yoga that has been popularized in the last several decades is often hyper-focused on the external, and on asana as an expression of one’s ‘level’ of practice. It’s competitive and controlling, rooted in diet culture and white-supremacist ideals of perfection and achievement. It keeps the practitioner at the surface level, discarding and essentially denying the vastness of Yogic traditions.

Yoga’s relatively recent commercialization often gets the blame, but the shrinking of Yoga from a deeply connective way of being to a purely physical activity began at the time of India’s colonization. At that time, the study of yoga was largely forbidden; asana was allowed mainly as acrobatic entertainment. (If you want to oppress people, it helps to silence any suggestion of their inherent divinity and freedom, you know? The study of Tantra and other branches of Yoga continued underground and re-emerged as some of the foundational philosophical pillars of the anti-caste and anti-colonial movements beginning in the 1920s).

When we deepen our practice beyond asana and explore Yoga as a way of being, we are moving toward decolonized practice, honoring Yoga’s pre-colonial roots in indigenous practices from India, Africa, and Asia.

what if I just want to practice asana for fitness?

It’s true, the physical practice is good for your physical body, whether or not it stokes your awareness of connection to anything beyond yourself. Āsana supports flexibility, increased respiratory and cardiovascular health and can help you build strength and muscle tone (American Osteopathic Association). But there are greater benefits you deny yourself when you focus on āsana alone. And the bottom line is, when we ignore the vast majority of Yoga’s substance in favor of one surface aspect, we are perpetuating erasure and harm of the originating cultures. That’s the real reason for this paragraph, y’all. I could shrug and say ‘to each their own’ if the No-Om Zone (which is an actual tagline for an actual yoga-fitness program) was only a missed opportunity for deeper connection - but it’s not. It’s harmful.

In my view, do as many chaturanga push-ups and bicycle crunches (or any number of more effective exercises) as you want. Just know that they are a narrow additive to what is only a tiny slice of the practice. Know that they are extras, they are beside the point. They don’t take the place of Om or Savāsana. And still, let these movements stoke awareness of your connection to everything beyond yourself. Understand and honor asana’s place in the vastness of yoga.

adopting an intention of nonduality

Whatever your movement practice, intention will shape and focus your experience. Around here, we tend to offer an intention from and for the heartspace; it’s an invitation for deeper meaning within the movement. It also impacts the way that you move. You could practice the same postures in the same order every day and experience them totally differently each time, based on the intention behind the practice.

In embracing nonduality, the intention behind each pose and movement becomes more about the internal experience and energetic impact than any external result. Which is to say, practice to experience and celebrate your divine body, not to control or change it. You might in fact develop greater control of your movement, and your body might in fact change in ways that you appreciate, as a result of your asana practice. But these are again extras, beside the point.

How to embrace nonduality in asana practice

First of all, enjoy your Self, bodymind and spirit. Remember, bliss is available to you in and through this body. Be curious, challenge yourself, share your discoveries and delight in the “level up” moments of your physical practice. Let go of comparison, competition, and perfectionism (which also means, if you do find yourself comparing or competing, offer yourself grace and time to let it go). Move with joy and with curiosity, from a place of love.

Consider each shape from the inside-out. What is happening in that chaturanga, besides the reverse push-up? Consider muscular engagement as holding the energetic center and aligning your bones and tissues so that breath can move freely. If breath could move through your whole body, how would it move through this shape? If there are places where breath would get stuck, create space there by lengthening or engaging differently. Work with your body instead of against it.

Know that the surface view of your physical practice doesn’t have any bearing on the value or depth of your yoga practice as a whole, nor on your inherent goodness or worthiness. That is the point. Āsana is part of the practice but it isn’t the whole practice; your body is part of your (divine!) self, but it isn’t the whole of you. Recognize the vastness of the practice, and of yourself.

(p.s. In addition to what we offer on the PYC platform, I want to draw your attention to our colleague Abiola Akanni’s work. Her Non-Performative Yoga rejects perfectionism, competition, and the narrow, fitness-based version of yoga popularized after the colonization of India by the former British Empire. You can read about Abiola and her work here).