AKA The Beginner’s Guide to the Human Experience
The first key to yoga, and to life, is to have fun . Play. Be curious. Allow yourself to get excited. Because what is life? Life is a game. Now, if you’re not having fun while playing the game, then either you are not playing it right or it’s a terrible game. And life, with all its sorrows, hardships and suffering, is most definitely not a terrible game. It is, in fact, the most beautiful game of all because:
- It contains in itself an infinite multitude of other games
- If it wasn’t the best possible game available, you simply wouldn’t be playing it. The very fact that you are alive in this present moment means you have chosen this game over any other option you have
This is the game you are playing. So play it right and have fun.
Why did people sing in the old times? Not 20–30 years ago, real old times . They didn’t sing to get famous, they didn’t sing to make money. They didn’t even sing because they were particularly good at it. They sang because it was fun . Why did people study? Learn new things? Not because they wanted to get a degree. Not even because they wanted to be smart. Or to be better than someone else. They studied and learned new things because they were fun and exciting. And that’s it. That’s all you need. Don’t forget to enjoy and have fun in life. In yoga, we often like to talk about doing things with intentions and purpose. Moving with purpose. Talking, walking with purpose. However, that purpose and intention can very easily just be having fun and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is an absolutely beautiful and brilliant reason to do anything.
You might be thinking now, well, that sounds nice and all, but there is no purpose or meaning to having fun. Well, yes there is. Think about it. It’s one of the most meaningful things you can do. The best things in life, that make life worth living, are fun. Take something universally, absolutely, undoubtedly meaningful, that is integral to the human experience — that’s love, right? And what’s the highest, most intimate and creative form of love you can share with someone? That’s having sex. And what’s having sex? It’s fucking fun ! Right?
Another ideal, a state towards which I’m moving at all times is freedom. What’s the highest, purest form of freedom? Well, I don’t know. But I’ll bet it’s something really fucking fun as well.
So just have fun. Just be.
Listen to your body. The body is constantly talking to you about what it needs and what it doesn’t. All of these different feelings and sensations are a language through which the body is communicating YOUR needs. Because you are the body. Yoga is literally the union of the mind, body and soul. It’s both the journey and the destination. And once we learn to fully embrace the wholeness within we can begin to start connecting to the universe, the one consciousness that each and every one of us is an inseparable part of.
So if you feel pain, discomfort or tension while doing any of this, please listen to your body and back off. Return to child’s pose if necessary. Re-establish your breath. This is not the place to be pushing your body to absolute limits. There are other activities and sports where you can do that if you feel it is necessary and useful for you. Yoga is more about treating your body with kindness, love, care and respect. As it should be treated. Furthermore, how can you expect others and the society to treat you and your body with these intentions if you don’t do that yourself? It doesn’t work that way. Everything is reciprocal, everything is connected . It’s the simple law of karma. Do unto yourself as you would unto others and vice versa. It really is that simple.
So carry that feeling and that knowledge with you at all times, both on and off the mat. Move, act and speak with clear, pure intentions, with focus, love and mindful softness. And you will notice that how you carry yourself physically will reflect in your mind, your mood and energy levels. Your body will thank you for it. It will smile to you. And that, while also so simple, is a concept that so many people struggle to understand. You can see it in how people walk, sit, talk, how they move. Notice how many people are flailing their limbs around when they move. Like the limbs weren’t theirs. Like they borrowed them from someone they didn’t really like that much in the first place. Like they weren’t a part of THEM. So, move mindfully, move with grace. At least, let that be your goal.
You were given this body . Is what some yoga teachers might say. While it is true, I feel like it’s not the whole truth. Yes, you were given a body . Well, in a cosmic kind of sense we can also say you chose your body. But you were given the choice . You were given a body, but this body, the one you have right now, you made it . You made it as a cumulative effort of everything you’ve ever said, eaten, thought, drunk, smoked, injected into it, and not to mention all the work and physical activities you have chosen to do or chosen not to do . Throughout every moment, every second of the present, we are creating our own bodies in the future. In the present, we are projecting our intentions and our energy into the future through what we do, say and think. That’s the real manifestation. There’s this “The Secret”-inspired way of thinking that we can just visualize and think happy thoughts and the Universe will magically grant us anything we wish for. Now I’m not saying visualization doesn’t have a place and time, which it certainly does, both in yoga and in life, nor that you shouldn’t think happy thoughts. But that is not how it works. Everything is reciprocal . What have you done to deserve this? What did you sacrifice, what did you give? You know, we are often so preoccupied with trying to get everything that we forget to give. And it all truly begins with the giving part. You must give to receive.
So, the body that is you, right now, you earned it. You deserve it. With all its problems, imperfections, the pretty parts and the parts you might not consider as pretty. And sometimes, things might happen, and they will happen, and you might think to yourself: “What have I done to deserve this? I’ve been such a good person, why is this terrible, painful thing happening to me?” Well, it could be a number of things. Maybe it’s karma from another lifetime. Maybe it’s cosmic chance, an element of randomness in the game of life. But maybe, just maybe, it starts a butterfly effect that ends up leading you to a better place through personal growth, development and acceptance that these tough times make you undergo. But that might be years or decades later. And right now, it hurts and you don’t know why. But by accepting and embracing that unpredictability, the volatility of life as it takes us through the highs and lows, and in trusting that the whole process will lead us exactly to where we need to be, is truly finding peace.
We have to take responsibility for where and who we are today. We are not victims of our environment nor victims of society. We, as a collective, have created where we are today, and we, as individuals, have created who we are today . And if we don’t take responsibility for that or even worse, if we give that responsibility away… well, you can imagine what happens then. Somebody else will pick up that responsibility for us and you know what? They might not have the best intentions with our environments, our bodies, our minds, our current and future children. By relinquishing responsibility you relinquish power . And remember, power, it can be any kind of power, from the power of free speech to physical power to the power to make your own decisions to monetary power, ANY KIND OF POWER , if used in a mindful, focused manner in the present will be projected into the future. So, furthermore, by giving up your responsibility and power in the present, you are also relinquishing your power in the future. The upsides to all of this, however, are that:
- We can always choose to start taking the responsibility back
- If we use this power/responsibility in a focused manner with clear intentions, the results will start compounding on each other with huge improvements in the long run if kept up with consistency
Those of you who have some basic understanding of math and finance could easily visualize this by thinking of compounding interest or inflation over a period of decades. Those of you who have been on the self-development path might have come across the idea of “the power of tiny gains” by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits. The idea is quite simple: your goal is to become better, every day, by 1%. If you do get better at something by just 1% every day, then in a year you will be 37 times better than you were at the beginning. That is the power of responsibility, focus and consistency. If you are not familiar with either or one of these terms, I suggest looking it up, these are very simple, yet powerful concepts that are kind of difficult to grasp intuitively. It’s quite impossible for the human brain to understand exponential functions, to think that a 1% improvement per day leads to 37x improvement in a year. Or that the US dollar, with an average inflation rate of 3.91% per year, has lost more than 86% of its purchasing power since 1971, in a timespan of just over 50 years. But it is true. It’s just math.
In responsibility lies our ability to get better. Because none of us are perfect. Nowadays it’s popular to say things like “everybody’s perfect just the way they are.” Well that sounds like a nice, fluffy idea, doesn’t it? “ I’m already perfect. ” Well, let’s play with this idea for a bit. Do I act as if I were perfect? Am I doing 100% of what’s best for me, my friends, family, community and my environment 100% of the time? No? Well, does it matter then? If you don’t act as if you were perfect, even though you actually were , does it even matter then whether you’re perfect or not? So there’s the first hole in this theory.
“ I’m perfect. ”
Takes a lot of hubris to say that out loud, huh? That’s the second thing that’s wrong with this idea. It lacks the humility, the humbleness that life should be approached with. No expectations . You should not expect to be perfect. Nor are you entitled to anything . The only thing that we are all entitled to is death. So be grateful for everything. Absolutely everything in life is immense wealth and richness because it is not the opposite. It is not death.
My third and most important point would be that just like those tough and sad and painful times we go through, being an imperfect being is an integral part of the human experience. It’s why we are able to grow, develop and evolve. By learning from our mistakes and imperfections. If we were all perfect, well, I don’t know what we would be, but we wouldn’t be human anymore. We would be something else at that point. If everybody were perfect, there would be no fluctuations in the collective human psyche, we would have nowhere to evolve to, we would stand still. And what is complete, absolute stillness? It’s death. The only time when a human body completely ceases all movement is when it’s dead. So, for now, we are not dead nor perfect. We are alive and we are present. And we use this present, this gift mindfully and with pure intentions to help create better versions of ourselves and the world in the future. Through helping and bettering ourselves we will also be more capable of helping our peers and loved ones on similar journeys.
The second key to life, and to yoga, is sacrifice . But don’t forget the first key though. It starts with the play . Now, if you play long enough and put in real effort, it morphs into something sacrificial. By investing your time and your energy, the ultimate currencies, into the play, you build it to become real, tangible and more meaningful. And only through that element of sacrifice you can start moving towards the truth. What you give to the world is yourself. Your true self . So only by staying honest and pure can you find meaning in life, your meaning in life.
In the end, this whole quest of self-development, self-improvement, becoming the best version of yourself, is actually not about you at all. Not about your ego. You are not becoming a better person for yourself. You are becoming a better person for everybody else, for the world. So that you can cherish and love and care for the people and the environment around you as best as you possibly can. There is nothing more selfless than self-development. And the way to develop, to get better, is through sacrifice.
It is important to know and keep in mind that there will be sacrifice and with it, suffering, one way or another. You are sacrificing your time as you read or listen to this. Your attention. Your energy. Every day you go to work, you go to school, you work out, you take risks, you sacrifice something. Even when you do nothing at all , you are sacrificing your time and even worse, you are sacrificing your potential .
Another useful term from economics is called opportunity cost . It is used to express the value or benefit given up by engaging in one activity as opposed to all other options. If you have $5 and the shop has ice cream, chocolate and lemonade all for sale at $5 each, then by buying ice cream, your opportunity cost is not getting the chocolate nor the lemonade. Or to save that money for later, for something entirely different. So, every single thing you do has an opportunity cost of everything else you could be doing instead . If you don’t do anything and become no one, then the opportunity cost is everything you could have done and the person you could have become. And that is the highest price you can pay for anything.
The key to keep in mind here is that you get to pick your sacrifice and you get to pick your truth. There will be suffering, yes. But you get to pick how you suffer and more importantly, what you suffer for .
Establish your breath. Slow, deep breaths, in and out through the nose. Engage your ujjayi breath if that is in your practice. In general, the idea is to establish a breathing pattern here that you would be able to maintain throughout the practice. If you look at the practice of yoga, especially if you’re new to it, you are very likely to view asana, which is the movements and the funky poses we do, breathwork and meditation as three separate and quite different parts. That’s understandable because that’s the way it seems, or at least that’s how it’s easier for our brains to make sense of it all. See, the human brain likes to categorize things and find direct, linear causations and links between causes and effects. It’s not that good at identifying and understanding complex, interconnected systems. But that is what yoga (and life) is. Not only the unity of mind, body and soul and not even only the unity between you and the universe (or the source or God, or whatever you wanna call it), but also a unity between the breath, movements and meditation. We are doing breathing exercises and meditating both in those poses as well as in moving from one to another. That is also a big reason why I personally really like long and strong holds. Because for me, it is often much easier to get into a deep meditative state when your whole body is engaged, working incredibly hard just to maintain that little bit of stillness in the body, while some or most of the muscles may already be shaking from the amount of strength required just to stay in that pose. And how do most people “fail” at meditating? Their mind wanders off. They start thinking about the past or the future or something else, lose focus from their object of meditation and won’t be present anymore. Which is kind of the point of meditation.
Now, if you’re in a plank, and have been there for the past 3 minutes, suddenly you will be very engaged in being present and in your breath, since that’s the only thing you can still regulate. The rest of the body is already giving it all. Will you start thinking about what you’re gonna have for dinner or what you said or didn’t say to that girl you like after 3 minutes in a plank? No, you probably won’t. That effort, that discomfort keeps us grounded in the moment. The seconds seem to go by slower and slower. And that’s what we want. That means we are more and more in the present, in the here and now. The slower the time goes, the more present we are. If you have ever gone through something truly traumatizing, some sort of a big accident or something similar, and you enter the panic state or the “fight or flight” mode and the seconds and the minutes seem to be going by just incredibly slowly. You probably don’t want to be present in that moment, but you will, and you will be very present . And in yoga, we are, in a sense, imitating the game of life on a smaller scale . The challenges on the mat prepare us to take on challenges in real life. We learn to listen and to trust ourselves and the universe. We learn that we always have the power to choose our reaction to whatever life throws at us.
Listen to your body. That’s the universal truth. But, again, that is not quite the whole truth. In Buddhism, there’s 2 things: compassion and emptiness. Compassion is a choice. You can decide to be compassionate, caring, loving, kind. Emptiness is seeing the world as it is, being free of delusions. Or at least knowing when you are being subject to delusion. And herein lies the problem. Our minds and our bodies are constantly trying to trick us. Because the path of least resistance is where the natural flow goes. And the things we need to work on are tough , man. A lot of resistance there. They’re uncomfortable. Awkward. Painful. But that is exactly where self development occurs. Remember which classes you used to dislike when you were in school? Probably the ones you weren’t so good at, huh? It goes both ways, of course. You also probably weren’t that good because you didn’t enjoy the class. You weren’t engaged. You weren’t excited. You weren’t even present. Or think about how easy it is to come up with all sorts of excuses as to why you should skip your workout, while you are laying on the couch eating snacks? Or better yet, how you can come up with all sorts of reasons to stick together with someone who you know isn’t the right person for you in the long run, but right now is kind of okay? Because why? You’re afraid of going out of your comfort zone? Of a tough talk? A broken heart? Letting go?
Our minds and bodies are like us. They are us. They, too, don’t like unpleasant things and they don’t like hard work, even though they may know it is good for them in the long run. They crave for the easy pleasures, now. The hours on a sofa watching Netflix, or worse, scrolling social media. The sugary sweets. The drugs. The porn. The comforting delusions. We must recognize and free ourselves from those delusions. Deep down, we know what’s right and what’s wrong for us. And nobody else can know it for us. The choice is ours, a hard life now and an easy life later or an easy life now and terrible, unforeseeable and sometimes even unimaginable consequences later.
The easiest path is usually not the right one for us. It will lead us to places where we actually don’t want to end up. The easiest path can take many forms. It can be not taking care of yourself. Not being true to your feelings. Conforming with other people’s ideas even though you don’t believe in them. Sticking to your old ways even though you are not getting any fulfillment from them. So be mindful of your path, your posture, your actions, words and thoughts. Disengage from the goals and the destination. Focus on the journey and the direction.
Religious people often speak about “being close to God,” but I think most people completely misinterpret the actual meaning of the phrase. It’s not about your proximity to God, or how much you please him. It’s about becoming God . About embodying as many of his qualities in yourself as you possibly can. About being the creator of your own destiny. Being close to God should mean being close to the status of a God.
In the end, we are all divine creators floating in the infinity of the universe that has been condensed to just the here and now, where everything happens . Nothing happens in the past and nothing happens in the future, everything that happens and ever will happen, happens only now, only in the present.
Once you learn to see the beauty in everything you can see the divine in everything.
Because
beauty is
indistinguishable
from divinity.
AFTERWORD
21.12.2022
The Basics of Yoga represents my underlying framework for seeing and experiencing the world. It’s a summary of life lessons and ideas I’ve formulated so far.
I don’t think any of the thoughts presented here are unique or original. This is more of an aggregation of ideas, sources of which would be too many to identify and reference. What I will say is where these ideas did not originate from. They did not originate from the traditional education system. They did not originate from mainstream media. They did not originate from any government-appointed officials, boards or organizations.
The Basics of Yoga was written between 9 November and 20 December 2022 and is a work in progress. If you have any comments, thoughts or counterarguments to any of my points, feel free to reach out to me via email or social media.
You can find me online:
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Thank you so much for your attention and I hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it.
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