5 Signs You Are an Advanced Yogi

At the studio where I first learned yoga there was one class a week called Yoga 2/3. While all the other classes on the schedule were open to all levels, this one class was considered "advanced" yoga. I used to stare at the class on the schedule and wonder when I would be ready to take the class. 

I was halfway through my initial yoga training before I had the courage to ask my teacher if she thought I was ready for the class. I basically wanted to know if I would keel over partway into class and embarrass myself. As teachers tend to do, she answered my question with a question: "What do you think advanced yoga is?"

And so I now pose that same question to you. 

What do you think comprises advanced yoga? (Hint: It has nothing to do with touching your hand to the floor.) Let's take a look together! 

5 Signs You Are an Advanced Yogi

Sign #1: Alignment > Aesthetics

Unfortunately, western society has brainwashed us into thinking that the way we look in a pose determines our talent as a yoga student. There is a myth about what it means to go deeply into a pose. Many believe that the hand must touch the floor in a standing pose; the head must touch the legs in a forward fold; or that you MUST choose the most challenging option in order to be considered worthy. 

Contrary to all of this, yoga is about alignment. (On all levels.) Maintaining proper physical alignment allows you to experience the safest and deepest stretch for your body. It also allows the energy to flow optimally through the nadis (energy channels in the body).  When we choose physical alignment, this trickles into our mental/emotional/spiritual well-being as well. 

The yoga pose is a friend, not an adversary waiting to be conquered. When you are able to feel a pose in your body and adjust your alignment accordingly, you are indeed moving into advanced territory.

Sign #2: Listen to Your Body

When we first start learning yoga, we all begin in a space where we listen and adhere to every instruction provided by the teacher. We work very hard to match the directions in our bodies. This is the learning process.

One of the greatest lessons of yoga is that we do not HAVE to listen mindlessly to authority figures. After you become comfortable in your practice, you start to learn that your shoulders do not love chaturanga; that taking a few deep breaths in child's pose helps you more than another round of vinyasa; that bending your knees in forward folds allows you to go deeper. When you shift to a mindset of listening to the yoga instructor as a guide rather than a drill sergeant, you have leveled up. 

The biggest compliment to me as a teacher is when I instruct a pose and I see students choose their own options. This shows me that these students have the courage to look different from the group and that I have cultivated an environment where being different is accepted and even encouraged. 

Listen to and understand the cues...but then...do you, baby.

Sign #3: Are You Breathing?

No, but I mean for real. Are you actually breathing? 

There was a funny moment in my yoga development where a teacher questioned whether I was breathing. I thought, of course I am. As she taught, I listened to her cues to inhale/exhale and I truly believed I was doing just that. However, as she stood beside me and began cueing the breath, we both discovered that I was imaging myself breathing without actually doing so physically. (Weird.) And thus began my journey to understand how to physically connect my breath with my movement. 

The breath is a vehicle for movement. As a beginner, you move and then breathe in response. For example, as you start to forward fold, you will then exhale. An advanced yogi is one who has come to understand that it is actually the breath that initiates the movement. I start to inhale, and then the body responds by rising out of a pose. 

When you start to initiate all movement with a breath, yoga turns into poetry. It is an artform, and you are the moving canvas. 

Sign #4: You Have Not Mastered Anything

They say that at whatever point that you master downward facing dog, you can stop doing yoga for you will have mastered everything. Another way to say this is that you will never master any pose. There will always be more to learn.

Ego can very easily slip into our yoga practice. Sometimes it shows up as feeling superior to another because you feel you can do a pose better. Other times it shows up as that feeling that you have mastered a pose and you no longer need to work hard at it. That student who enters the classroom and immediately feels the need to showcase their handstand? Most likely, not an advanced yogi.

Those who have genuinely worked at their yoga practice for years know the truth: we will never master anything. Every time you start to think you have, a new layer of the pose unveils itself. What a wonderful adventure! I wonder what I will learn today in my yoga practice?!

The advanced yogi is constantly curious. They will never stop learning, and they will always want to hear others' perspectives. As stated in the Bhagavad Gita, "Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self." This journey never ends! 

Sign #5: Yoga Exists Off Your Mat

Due to the rise in popularity of yoga in the western hemisphere, for many it is simply another form of physical exercise. There are, in fact, many trends and off-shoots of yoga that prey upon this idea. 

Those of us who travel the advanced yogic path know this to be a sad misconception. While "yoga butt" is definitely a thing - as evidenced by the wonderful evolution of my own posterior topography - it is certainly not the reason I step onto my mat. For centuries, yoga has been considered a science of wellness. It is a recipe for finding peace within, which then leads to peace in the external world. 

Someone who thinks of yoga as purely exercise will unfortunately never reap the amazing benefits of deeper introspection. An advanced yogi, on the other hand, will start to find yoga in their real lives, far from their mats. Perhaps it is noticing that when a pose becomes uncomfortable, you clench your jaw and lift your shoulders. Later during a tense confrontation, you notice those same things. Since you have already practiced how to change the body on the mat, you are now better equipped to make change in real time as well. This is just one tiny example of how yoga can begin to encompass and align all areas of our lives!

In Conclusion

As I look back at my yoga journey, I can see many ways in which I got stuck in all of the above lessons at one point or another. Possibly I will get caught up in one of them tomorrow! These are all necessary steps on the journey. I know that in 10 years, I will look back at who I am today and think with compassion about all that the adorable lady with a great yoga butt still has to learn. Perhaps the ultimate sign of an advanced yogi is feeling so much peace in the knowing that I have yet so much to understand.

Regardless, the journey is beautiful, and I am looking forward to sharing it with as many of you as I can.