Advanced Practice???

Reading for Tuesday, December 2, 2014 yoga class

From the "Yoga for Healthy Aging" blog, written by Nina Zolotow

"A number of years ago, I encouraged a friend of mine to join me in taking Rodney Yee's advanced class.  Even though she had a muscular, athletic, and stiff body that made doing super bendy poses difficult, if not impossible, I knew that she understood how to take care of herself in class, that she would adapt the poses for her particular body type and keep herself safe, so I wasn't worried about the class being too hard for her.  She was interested, however, she expressed some concerns about not being "advanced" enough for the class.  I decided to discuss the matter with our teacher himself, feeling fairly sure of what he was going to say.  But what he told me when I asked him if she was "advanced" not only took me by surprise but has stuck with me all these years, transforming my thinking about the asana practice in general.  What he said was this:  "Of course she's advanced enough.  She does yoga more mindfully than any student I've ever seen."

And here I'd been thinking that being advanced meant being capable of doing difficult poses, like 10 minute headstands or extreme backbends, at some level or another!  But doing yoga "mindfully"...now, here was a goal we could pursue for our lifetimes and no matter our level of physical capacity was, we would always have the ability to go deeper and deeper into the practice."

Amen to that!!!  Attention/intention in your yoga practice.  Now THAT is an advanced practice.