Yoga is supposed to be about your own practice. We are all told when we start taking yoga classes that “this is your own practice” and to focus on where we are in our practice and not to pay attention to what other people in class are able to do or how flexible or strong someone else is. We hear teachers say “leave your ego at the door” or “don’t look at what others are doing”, etc.
But this is the USA! We thrive on competition and spend an enormous amount of resources and energy on looking, acting and feeling like those more beautiful, richer or somehow better than us. If you search social media for yoga, you will find hundreds of yogis posting pictures of themselves or friends doing beautiful poses (see my blog post hot young yogis on my site for more on this). We all love to see beautiful poses, and we all look at others practicing with us. Our emotions can range from envy to encouragement to inspiration as we look at others doing great yoga. It doesn’t matter what even the greatest sage says, we are watching others.
So I want to encourage you to use our cultural tendency to look at appearances and turn that habit into a positive, practice enhancing habit. I will credit Katherine Payne, one of my early teachers, with saying “if you are struggling with the pose, try borrowing the pose from your neighbor”. At the time, Katherine was teaching a workshop and another of my early teachers, Ronly Blaul, was practicing next to me. I was truly struggling to get into the pose and feeling frustrated and upset that I could not “do it right”, and my ego that I did not leave at the door was not happy. Ronly, however, was breathing easy and looked perfect! When Katherine said “borrow that pose”, it lighten my mood, made my laugh and I thought “I’d like to borrow Ronly’s pose.” So I did. And when I did, my breathing got smoother, I relaxed the tension in my body, and the pose felt much better. While it is debatable whether or not the pose looked better or not, I am absolutely sure that I got a lot more benefit from the pose when I was relaxed an enjoying the idea of borrowing it from Ronly than when I was struggling to do it better.
My advice to you is let go of pretending that you are not checking out all the other people in class. Borrow a pose from your neighbor, or friend, or teacher. Relax and enjoy the practice, and maybe even laugh a little. I think it will enhance your practice far more than feeling guilty for looking at what other yogis are doing.
