Making Yoga Work for Me

By Pragya Bhatt Vice president WICCI Karnataka

As a software engineer turned yoga teacher, it’s safe to say I have a very intimate relationship with yoga. I have spent an inordinate amount of time on the practice, taking yearly trips to Pune, meticulously studying the texts, exploring various styles of yoga, reading academic literature, getting a Master’s in yoga, and even writing a book on it!

This fixation changed when I had difficulties conceiving. In close to a decade of teaching, I had maybe taken a total of five days sick days. I had (and still have) a robust constitution and I attribute it to yoga. I was young, dynamic, taking up to five classes a day, surviving on little sleep, finicky about food - and I held these up as gold standards of what a yoga instructor “should” be doing. But after years of enjoying good health I started questioning whether I was actually healthy. After all, isn’t conceiving the most natural thing in the world for a woman? It didn’t help that the first thing people ask when a yoga teacher has health issues is, “But you’re a yoga teacher.” As if we don’t put enough pressure on ourselves.

I’ve written extensively about my successful battle with unexplained infertility. However, I’ve never write about how my relationship with yoga changed because of it. Suddenly my teachers told me to reduce the dynamism of my practice and to step back from my aggressive approach. It was the proverbial sand in a clenched fist scenario. I had been holding my yoga so tightly with my entire body, that it was seeping through any crevice it could find. With the new approach that life and my teachers were showing me, I had to expand and give my practice space to breathe within me. The new practice initially felt awkward and uneasy, but eventually I recognized that it was a big sigh of relief. It was sinking in to the practice, rather than forcing the practice to stay bound within the contours of my being. I even made peace with finding joy in children, even though I may never be able to birth them. And soon, within this peace, this joy and this space, there germinated a tiny seed of hope.

Every so often as young, dynamic yogis, we want to work for the yoga, for the asanas. Many years ago a friend of mine told me that if you put in the work asanas come to you, you don’t have to go to the asanas. I believe Smt. Gita Iyengar has said something similar to practitioners. My experience has taught me that it is necessary for our practice to change with the seasons of life. When we say that our practice roots us or anchors us, it doesn’t mean that our sirsasanas will always be as solid as they were when we had the glorious abs and metabolism of a 25 year old. It doesn’t mean that we will move our bodies through the motions of a set sequence for years on end with the discipline of a drill sergeant. It means that look at this vast, ancient practice and lean into what is soft, comforting and nourishing.

And so, even now, during my postpartum phase, when there is an unprecedented amount of space between my nose and my shins and my hamstrings are on fire in paschimmotanasana, I’m not anxious. I now practice with a quiet faith and confidence, that soon this asana, and so many more, will come to me.