If you haven’t practiced yoga before and you’re active on social media, then you may have seen picture-perfect yoga poses that amazed you. Some of you may have felt inspired, wanting to learn that pose one day, and then started practicing yoga. However, some got discouraged thinking they are super inflexible that there’s no way in the world they’d be able to do that pose, so they dismissed the idea of practicing without trying.

Let me be clear from the start. There’s more to yoga than those beautiful poses (‘asana’ in Sanskrit) you see on social media. There are eight limbs of yoga, and asana is just one of them. In a normal yoga class setting in the studios and gyms, we work on two out of eight limbs of yoga. They are the asana (physical postures/poses) and pranayama (breathing), which focus on connecting breaths with movements.

In the beginning of my yoga journey, I aimed to do all the poses perfectly that I pushed myself hard in every class I attended as if it’s a competition. Truth be told, I used to criticize myself and others (in my head). I’d roll my eyes if someone is not doing it as per the image of a perfect pose I set for myself.

But after years of practicing and teaching yoga, I learned that everyone was busy focusing on themselves and doing their own thing during a class. Silly me for competing with people who didn’t even know they competed with me. I also realized there’s no specific time to do a specific pose and no actual pressure (apart from your head) in perfecting a pose. There was no comparison on how my pose looked like with other people, be it in the class or on social media.

The truth is, everyone is different. Even the people who look similar from the outside are different from the inside (anatomically). Some poses might be easy for some but hard for others. And some are naturally flexible or became flexible from a young age just for doing sports like gymnastics.

Contrary to what we see in social media, yoga doesn’t have to look pretty or perfect. Yoga is for everyone, and you don’t need to be flexible to practice yoga. Just do the option or modification that is suitable for you. As long as you’re feeling everything in the right places and you’re not injuring yourself, that’s more than enough. At the end of the day, this is your journey, your practice. You will progress at your own pace.

Practicing yoga helps us to embrace our imperfections, to be kind to our body, and to work on ourselves, which no one but us can see. So step on the mat without judgement and expectation. Do it with an open-heart, awareness, and patience. Remember to practice yoga however suitable it is for you. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

 Namaste and love to you all!