give me a flexible spine at 80 years old then bulging biceps or triceps any day. like someone is going to do chataranga dandasana when they’re old? get real. I’d rather have healthy connective tissue and joints, and THAT’S what flexibility is all about.

Thankfully I teach at a studio now (started out in the gym environment, which i didn’t enjoy at all – though it has merit as a way to introduce yoga to people).

What i’m constantly learning (and telling my students) is that asana practice is a process to open the mind, many still look at each pose as a physical goal or look to “get”, which i can totally understand, after 7 years of weightlifting and cardio (i gave it up for yoga-only 18 months ago)

Does that make sense?

And frankly I think the Patanjali reference is a bit of a red herring. Besides rolling around on the floor, another thing the Sutras don’t talk about is doing Vinyasa, Flow, or Ashtanga yoga. I mean, it’s not a big secret that Krishnamacharya basically invented modern posturla yoga in the 1930′s, right? Chances are, if you took Patanjali to a modern yoga class of any description, he wouldn’t have any idea what was going on.

OK, enough of my two cents.

I think there are three basic reasons why people have this false perception that yoga is about “rolling around on the floor and relaxing.”
1. A lot of (bad) classes are taught like this.
2. The media portrays yoga like this.
3. It fits our American “quick fix” mentality. No one wants to work hard to lower their stress levels. Indeed, the very notion of working hard to lower your stress is paradoxical. But that’s what you have to do. Relaxation, de-stressing, peace of mind, etc. do not come for free. If it were true that all you had to do to get rid of your stress is roll around on a yoga mat and sigh loudly over and over, no one in our society would be stressed out.