The Advanced Yogi

To me, saying someone is advanced in yoga is like saying that they are pretty much a certified saint.  That's because I don't evaluate students using the foot behind the head criteria, i.e., how radically bendy they can be with their bodies.  Even though modern yoga is so much about the body, my definition of an advanced yoga practitioner includes much more than the body.

When I reflect on all the amazing students who have graced the yoga room in the years I've been teaching, I remember many that I would call advanced.  Here are some of them (all true stories!):

*  The woman who had rheumatoid arthritis and was in intense pain most of the time; she came to her first yoga class with me, smiled during the entire class, then had the generosity to thank me profusely after the class.

*  The young woman with one leg; she was sitting when I introduced myself and asked if she had any limitations that might affect her yoga practice: she said no!  It was only when class started and I saw her practicing that I realized her situation.  She had lost a leg to bone cancer when she was a teen, and was a gorgeous yoga practitioner, who didn't expect or ask for one iota of special attention.  (Of course we were all awed by her anyway!)

*  Our dear friend and long-time student who lost her two children.  Yoga was her lifeline for many years; she kept stringing one pose in front of the other, and in that way survived what was unsurvivable.  She told me once that she couldn't describe what yoga did for her, but that it did something nothing else did.

*  Our many students who have struggled with debilitating depression and yet have found the strength of will and heart spirit to get themselves through the door and take their yoga class.  For them, I know, getting to class can be like climbing Mt. Everest.

*  An amazing student who navigated her way through ovarian cancer that was ultimately fatal.  Yet she had such profound nobility of spirit and was a yogini to the very end; she chanted during chemotherapy and did pranayama when she couldn't do physical practice.

And many more.  They have taught me so much about what it means to truly "advance" in yoga practice.  When it's definitely not about perfecting poses anymore, when life is beyond all that, they have shone like beacons of the best of humanity, revealing what is possible through devoted, mature practice.  Forehead to the earth, I bow to them all.