If you practice yoga long enough, one day some random stranger will probably come up to you after class and say, “You have such a beautiful practice!” This happened to me the other day. I was practicing next to a heavily tattooed man — a serious yogi with all the high-end gear and accoutrements — and I recall being astounded by how much he was sweating all over the place. After class, as I was gathering my belongings, he came over to me and told me that he thought I had a beautiful practice.
Photo credit: Y100’s Design 菲力喜歡他的工作
My response was a mix of embarrassed laughter and befuddlement. No one has said something like this to me in a long time, not since I busted up my shoulder and had to take almost two years off from physically rigorous yoga. Prior to my injury, though, people would say things like this to me quite often (mostly because they were wowed by my yoga acrobatics, I think), but I never really figured out how to respond properly.
So what is the proper response? How does one graciously accept a compliment like this, without being egotistical or cocky about it?
Unfortunately, I’ve never been good at giving or receiving compliments. This was not something I grew up with in my household. In many ways, my upbringing was stereotypically Asian (think “Tiger Mom”), where anything short of “perfect” was failure. And even “perfect” was never quite good enough.
So when someone tells me I have a beautiful yoga practice, I am never quite sure how to respond, or even what to make of the remark. Is it genuine? Is this person making fun of me? How could they say something so utterly wrong?
My teacher Raghunath had a great way of dealing with compliments (and he got lots of them). In response to someone praising his asana practice, Raghu would always deflect the praise by saying, “Everything I can do, I do by the mercy of my teachers.”
This statement, to me, speaks volumes of truth about yoga and how people learn it. Were it not for our teachers, and their teachers before them, we wouldn’t know how to do the simplest asanas. And were it not for our teachers taking an active interest in us, we could never progress to more challenging asanas.
At the end of the day, though, I find that compliments about my asana practice make me uncomfortable because they suggest something that I don’t want to believe about my practice, namely, that the power of my practice is in the outward appearance of my asanas. I have had many days of practice where I was fueled by my ego, jumping up and around like a circus performer, but my mind and intention were totally in the wrong place. Is this really a beautiful practice? I don’t think so. But then what does a beautiful practice look like?
I’m starting to think that a beautiful practice doesn’t look like anything in particular. A beautiful yoga practice is one that goes beyond the mat, beyond the toned muscles and sexy yoga pants. I can’t say for sure what it is, but whatever a beautiful yoga practice amounts to, it’s almost certainly not something you can take a picture of and put on the cover of Yoga Journal.
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Perhaps doing advanced asanas reflects the amount of practice, effort, discipline and years you must have put into this? And that is beautiful? I admit though that this is not always the case, as some people might be stiff and some just jump around without any apparent effort, so perhaps a beautiful practice is anything done with focus/mindfulness?
This exact thing happened to me last month at a class I don’t usually take. I’d taken a “lunch break” yoga class at my usual studio on election day — not usually something that I can do with a full-time job. The class was entirely different than anything I’d done before — something like halfway between a Hatha, restorative class and aerobics. I felt more awkward and out of place than anything else. (I almost don’t feel like I’ve done yoga if there’s no chanting and meditation.) When the class was over, the instructor came up to me and literally used the same words, “You have such a beautiful class.” I was embarrassed and felt my face flush immediately. All I did was say thank you shyly, finish cleaning my mat and quickly leave the studio. I’m not sure why I was so embarrassed. Later that evening, all I could think about was why she’d said that to me. I keep my eyes closed throughout most of my practice, so I rarely see what other people around me are doing. Relieved to know that someone else has experienced something similar.
And by “class,” I meant practice. 🙂 Can’t type today.
In my experience, a beautiful practice is something more like a Bhriony practice where the transitions between asanas are as much a part of the session as the edge of any one pose. It reflects a singular focus that IS yoga; it’s meditative and mindful.
If this tatoo’d dude was saying you have a beautiful practice then probably you’re not only achieving asana but outwardly revealing focus, self awareness and pranayama skillz through the sequences. That’s great! That’s a lot more than just acrobatics.
About the compliment: my thought is that the Self should be equally as appreciative for the body’s ability to be ready to do what it wants as the compliment suggests. Perhaps a response like “today was a good day for asana” would be more in touch with that relationship between the Self and your body.
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