Yoga Is Not Enough

My husband Donald gave me this 24-minute video to watch, and I realised that most of what she talks about I've accidentally implemented.

The video was by Vanja Moves, and it was called The One Rule That Changed My Life Forever. I'll put the link at the bottom because I really would like you to watch it. It's brilliant.

Her basic premise is that most of us build our lives and then try to squeeze looking after our bodies into whatever space is left.

Work comes first. Family comes first. The commute. The house. The endless jobs. The things we have to do and the things we think we have to do.

And somewhere amongst all that we try to fit in a yoga class, a run, a trip to the gym or a walk.

She does it the other way round.

Movement isn't something she adds to her life. It is part of how she has built her life.

And I realised, listening to her, that to some extent I have instinctively done the same thing.

Movement is woven into my days.

I practise yoga (obviously). I also walk and cycle. I sit on the floor quite a lot. I squat down to do things. I carry things. I take the stairs. If I have been sitting for too long, I generally want to get up.

None of this feels particularly virtuous. I don't think of myself as exercising every time I move.

I just like using my body.

And I think that distinction matters.

The other 23 hours

One of the ideas in the video that really stayed with me was this:

What happens during the hour when you exercise matters.

But so do the other 23.

You can come to yoga once a week and spend an hour moving your spine in every direction, opening your hips, balancing, squatting, reaching your arms overhead and getting yourself down onto the floor.

All brilliant.

But then there are another 167 hours before I see you again.

What happens in those?

I sometimes hear people say, "I did my yoga on Wednesday", and of course I understand exactly what they mean.

But increasingly I think yoga — or perhaps movement more generally — works best when we stop seeing it as a separate appointment with our body.

Modern life makes it remarkably easy not to move very much. We sit to work. Sit to eat. Sit to travel. Sit to relax. We have machines that wash things, clean things and carry us from one floor to another. We can order almost anything without leaving the house.

None of those things is bad in itself. I'm certainly not proposing that we throw away the washing machine or the dishwasher.

But our bodies adapt to the lives we give them.

And an hour of deliberately moving them doesn't entirely cancel out a life designed around convenience.

Which made me think about my 30-minute classes

I teach a lot of half-hour yoga classes.

And perhaps you're thinking: Hang on, Jordanna. You've just told us an hour isn't enough.

But actually this has made me understand even more clearly why I believe in those short practices.

Thirty minutes of yoga doesn't need to contain everything your body requires.

It can be the beginning.

You get up in the morning and move your spine. You bend. You twist. You balance. You bear weight through your hands. You breathe deeply. You notice your body.

And perhaps, having started your day that way, you're a little more inclined to use it.

Maybe you walk somewhere you would normally drive. Maybe you spend half an hour in the garden. Maybe you play on the floor with a child or grandchild instead of watching from the sofa. Maybe you carry something rather than immediately looking for the easiest way not to.

Or you just notice when your body is asking to change position.

That matters too.

I don't think the purpose of a 30-minute practice is to tick off your movement for the day.

I think it can change the way you inhabit the rest of it.

Movement doesn't always need a name

I think this is the bit I recognised most strongly in myself when I watched Vanja's video.

We've become very good at putting movement into categories.

Yoga. Running. Strength training. Pilates. Swimming. Cycling. A workout.

All useful. But bodies don't know whether an activity has a name.

They know that you reached your arms above your head to hang out the washing. That you knelt down to weed a flowerbed. That you lifted a box. That you climbed a hill. That you got yourself down onto the ground and back up again. That you danced in the kitchen because a song you liked came on.

None of it needs to go into a training plan.

You don't need to record it.

You don't even need to be trying to achieve anything.

Perhaps we've made movement slightly harder for ourselves by turning so much of it into exercise.

Exercise tends to need a time slot. The right clothes. Sometimes a class or a gym or a programme. It can become another thing on the list that we either managed to do today or didn't.

Movement can be much less complicated.

It can simply be part of being alive.

The question isn't always:

Have I exercised today?

Perhaps sometimes it's simply:

How much have I moved today?

Perhaps yoga isn't enough

So yes, I'm a yoga teacher telling you that yoga isn't enough.

I would absolutely love you to come to class every week. I think a regular yoga practice can do extraordinary things for strength, mobility, balance, body awareness and, perhaps most importantly, our relationship with ourselves.

But I don't want your relationship with your body to begin when you unroll your mat and end when you roll it back up again.

I want the practice to spill over.

Maybe that's one of the real purposes of the mat.

We practise paying attention to our bodies for half an hour or an hour so that eventually we become better at paying attention to them for the rest of the day.

And perhaps that's a rather different way of thinking about what it means to have a yoga practice.

Not as the bit of the week when you use your body.

But as something that reminds you to use it.

So I'm going to leave you with the video that started me thinking about all of this.

It's only 24 minutes.

Watch it.

And perhaps don't ask yourself:

How can I find more time to exercise?

Try this instead:

How could I build a little more movement into the life I'm already living?

Because perhaps the best thing your yoga practice can do is remind you that your body doesn't only exist when you're on your yoga mat.

You live in it all day.

The One Simple Rule That Changed My Life Forever