Are we practicing yoga or just performing it?

Yesterday I wrote a comment on Instagram that generated a few reactions: I basically said that someone who is not vegan is not really practicing yoga.

As expected, some people disagreed.

The interesting thing is that I was not talking about postures at all.

One of the greatest misunderstandings of modern yoga is the belief that yoga and asana are the same thing.

Asana are postures, movements, a physical practice that can improve strength, flexibility, balance and wellbeing; they can be beneficial, enjoyable and even transformative.

But they are not yoga.

The more I studied the teachings of Patanjali, the more this became clear to me. What attracted me was discovering that yoga was never primarily about what the body does, but about how a human being chooses to live. In fact, compared to what we see in modern yoga studios, the physical aspect occupies a surprisingly small space.

Yoga is not something that happens on a mat for an hour before returning to our usual habit, it is present in the way we think, in the way we relate to others, in the choices we make when nobody is watching.

You can sit quietly in silence and be practicing yoga.

You can spend years perfecting advanced postures and never move beyond exercise.

What changed my perspective was shifting my attention from the postures to the principles. The Yamas (the ethical principles) are often described as the foundation of yoga, yet they are frequently treated as a side note, while most of the attention goes to flexibility, handstands and beautiful poses for social media.

The first Yama is Ahimsa, non violence.

Interestingly, yoga did not bring me to veganism, the opposite happened.

I had already been vegan for years before I stepped onto a yoga mat and long before I knew anything about yogic philosophy.

When I eventually discovered Ahimsa, I remember feeling something unexpected: it felt as if I had found words for a path I was already walking.

Perhaps that is also why I struggle to separate yoga from veganism today: the more I study the foundations of the practice, the more they seem to point in the same direction.

Yesterday I watched a video explaining how the principles of yoga naturally point toward a vegan way of living. As I listened, I found myself nodding again and again, because it articulated something I have been feeling for years.

I have seen something similar before: for many years I worked in the Agile world.

Agile was never meant to be a collection of meetings, boards and ceremonies but it was built on values and principles.

Yet I watched many organizations become incredibly good at performing the rituals while completely missing the mindset behind them.

They held the standups, the retrospectives and the planning sessions, followed the process, used the right terminology.

They looked Agile but they were not living the principles; at some point, the ritual became disconnected from its purpose.

For me, the same question applies to yoga.

If we practice the postures but ignore the principles they are meant to support, are we practicing yoga or are we simply performing its rituals?

I have only been practicing yoga for three years and at one point I seriously considered becoming a yoga teacher but then something unexpected happened.

The more I studied traditional yoga, the less interested I became in teaching modern yoga.

While my husband was completing his teacher training, he often shared stories from the course and many of them left me frustrated because of how disconnected much of today's yoga culture seems from the philosophical foundations that originally attracted me.

Ironically, every one of those conversations made me a little less yogic. I would become passionate, argumentative, annoyed, not exactly the calm and detached attitude yoga is supposed to cultivate.

I did not give up on becoming a yoga teacher because I do not believe in yoga but because I believe in yoga more than I believe in the way it is often taught today.

That tension would make me a poor teacher: I would spend too much time questioning the system, challenging assumptions and getting frustrated by the gap between the philosophy and the practice, I would probably leave every class feeling that something essential had been forgotten.

So I let that idea go.

Yesterday, Fede became a certified yoga teacher and I am genuinely happy for him.

He has a much more relaxed way of approaching these things: he can listen to an idea, consider it, keep what resonates and let the rest go.

I, on the other hand, tend to grab an idea, shake it vigorously, turn it upside down and inspect every corner looking for inconsistencies. That is probably why he became a yoga teacher and I didn't; I have realized that I am better suited to being a student than a teacher.

And for now, that is exactly where I belong.

So the question remains: if yoga is built upon principles such as non violence, truthfulness and self discipline, can we remove those principles and still call what remains yoga?

I don't know but what I do know is that the more I practice yoga, the less certain I become about many things.

Except one: yoga was never meant to be something we do, but something we live.

Maybe that is why I never became a yoga teacher: I am still too busy being a student.