How quitting yoga (might) make you happier, healthier, and wiser

Yoga was a great source of happiness in my life and I think it helped to keep me in good health for several years.  Yoga also provided a wonderful community and a challenging flow activity.  Until it didn't.

In the beginning...

Mostly out of curiosity, Theresa and I took a beginner's Iyengar yoga class from Lois Steinberg while I was a postdoc at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.  It was fun, but we moved shortly thereafter and left yoga behind.

We picked it up again a few years later at the Houston Iyengar Yoga Studio.  Yoga starts slowly.  I recall feeling like I was learning how to sit and stand all over again, even though I was pretty sure I had mastered the art long ago.  Once you have the right-side up versions going well, Iyengar flips it on its head.  Literally.  Shoulder stands, head stands, and even hand stands enter the curriculum, aided by various blocks, bolsters, belts, and ropes.

I loved it.  The people were friendly and the sense of accomplishment was very satisfying. My head stands moved away from the wall and into the center of the room. I started going to two or three classes a week and began a home practice. 

Yoga came with me on moves from Houston to Los Angeles (at the Iyengar Yoga Institute of LA) and then from LA to Honolulu (at the Silent Dance Center).  

The eyes have it

During a Saturday morning class in Honolulu, I reached a personal milestone.  We were doing a pose that requires bending forward until your head touches the ground in front of you.  The advanced students then kicked up into a head stand.  On this day my teacher instructed me to kick up.  The worst that could happen was that I would fall over, which was a common enough occurrence for me, so I kicked up.  And I didn't fall over.  Standing on my head in the middle of the room, I felt like a total yoga badass.

The next day I looked in the mirror and saw a subconjunctival hemorrhage staring back at me.  If you have never had one, it is a (usually) harmless bloody smear across the white of your eye that occurs when a tiny blood vessel breaks just underneath the conjunctiva.  Harmless yes, but it will scare the bejeezus out of you the first time you see one in your own eye.  Don't believe me?  Google it.

This wasn't my first, but I had my ophthalmologist check it out anyway.  Diagnosis?  Harmless, but don't let your head fall below your heart until it clears up.  Uh-oh.  At least half a yoga class is spent with your head below your heart.  I decided to take some time off from yoga.

Way leads on to way

The next weeks were a revelation.  

Yoga with Hawaiian characteristics is a time consuming affair.  Classes started late, but not consistently late, so you had to arrive at the scheduled time and wait.  Then they tended to ramble on as long as the teacher wanted to keep you there.  

Life without yoga was filled with time.  I started eating dinner before 9pm on weeknights.  My Saturday mornings were my own; there was time for a leisurely breakfast and grocery shopping (and maybe even a few other errands) before lunch.

My doctor once told me that if time was an issue, he would recommend walking instead of yoga.  Now I had the chance to try it out. I started walking for exercise (almost) every day.  I'm not sure if switching from standing on my head to walking made me feel any better, but it didn't make me feel any worse either.  And walking takes up much less time, even if I stop to talk with the neighbors.

All in all, as much as I loved yoga, the practice had become a burden.  I was happier and at least as healthy without it.  I never went back.

But are you any wiser?

Maybe a little.  Yoga was a reminder that there is no recipe for health or happiness.  Clinging to one path can close your mind to another path that may serve you better.  What works in one context or at one time of life may not work at another.  And then again it might.  All of my former teachers are still practicing yoga and (I hope) still finding great meaning in the practice.  For me, yoga gave way to walking (and meditation, but more on that later).  The change served me well.  But you never know, one day I might be posting happy head stand selfies.