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Some people might confuse yoga with “working out” and I can totally understand why. When I first started practicing yoga it was because I wanted to start exercising. I wanted to move my body, become stronger. I could have started running or joined a gym, but for whatever reason I felt that yoga was the right option for me.

And boy was I right! After my first class in 2012 I was pretty much hooked. And so began a long journey of getting to know my body, discovering the depth of what yoga really is, and exploring the wisdom from the East.

I feel that I am not alone in this, and that a lot of us start to do yoga because of a wish to move our body, become healthier, and generally just to feel better. It’s becoming increasingly popular and as more of us talk highly of yoga, more people are showing up for yoga classes. I think most agree that this is a good thing, but it also makes it very easy for people to confuse yoga.

Because for me – it’s not a “work out”. It started as a physical way of moving my body, but it is so much more than this. Yoga is about health and well-being for the entire body/mind system, and on top of that yoga has an entire philosophical system at it’s base. At it’s core, it is meant to help us live “our best life” (as the kids say). Finding space and stillness in the body, breath and eventually in our everyday life, things become easier. We get to know ourselves and we can then start to find support from the philosophy and ancient texts to help us with our struggles and issues in daily life. The ancient yogis did this not only to find stillness but to find freedom.

How often do we struggle with how we think life “should” be? Or how often do we get stuck in the past? How often do we confuse pleasure with pain? How often do we start defining ourselves with our roles or our objects?

Yoga gets to the root of this. Uncomfortable? Sure. Worth it? Yes.

In this way, yoga can be viewed as psychology as well, and when I’ve been studying with yoga-teachers who are also therapists and psychologists I see how this all intertwines.

Another reason why I don’t want to define yoga as a “work out”, is that yoga should not be stressful. Working out and sweating is often combined with a feeling of stress in the body. And that is the opposite of what yoga is about.

There might be some effort and stress as we start to learn yoga and strengthen and open the body, but in it’s core texts yoga talks about how:

– Yogaposes (asana) should be done with steadiness and ease

– Breath should be steady

– It should feel effortless, like we can stay in it for a while

Here in India I have found that most classes are done in this way – steady and somewhat slow. A lot of teachers also incorporate different Eastern practices into the yoga class, such as Qi Gong and Tai Chi, and organic movement (not using an outside force; like using our arm to help our foot reach the thigh), and animal movement.

I am loving this way of doing yoga, finding strength and ease in my body without really sweating that much. But I am mindful of the fact that it has taken me years to get to this point, remembering how my body used to shake when doing poses (and sometimes still do when I try something new).

A little effort in the beginning is fine. Sweating, shaking, trying, falling, trying again. But eventually what we are working on should become effortless. There we will find stillness.

I recently talked with a yoga student about this. And how in our time sensitive life, where we barely have time to do yoga – most of us want to combine the two. Go to yoga and also get our “work out” done. And that for a lot of people this is probably what yoga is.

Because of this, I am weary of saying that yoga is not a work out. If it gets more people to try it (like me in the beginning), then why not. But as we have progressed in the west, with yoga on every street corner, I think it’s important to start to weave in what yoga is “really” about. And I think that we as yoga teachers have an obligation to do that. With respect to our students, and with respect to the yoga tradition. Otherwise just call it a fitness-class.

As a student or teacher (or person who wants to start doing yoga) – what do you think?