“True yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. Yoga is not to be performed, but to be lived. Yoga doesn’t care about who you have been, Yoga cares about the person you are becoming. Yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose, and for it to be truly called YOGA, its essence must be embodied.” Aadil Palkhivala
Isn’t this Aadil Palkhivala quote just wonderful! Almost every line of it has become familiar to us because of its ubiquity as a yoga meme on social media hasn’t it – but its a shame that, more often that not, its reduced to a single line, and the full essence of the words are diminished. And it’s the last line always seems to be the line that gets omitted, yet I don’t know about you, but the words ‘yoga’s essence must be embodied ‘ always feels like the most important.
Former student of BKS Iyengar and founder of Purna Yoga, Palkhivala always manages to distil the essence of yoga eloquently and passionately and as he explained in an interview with Yoga Journal, “Performing yoga is aggrandizing the ego. When yoga is done for perfection of posture, it is done for somebody else, the show, the façade, the appearance. When we live yoga we are working for the very reason our spirits took birth in human form. Therefore, performance is a waste of time. Living yoga alone is meaningful.
While practicing asana on the yoga mat, we learn how to focus, how to be nonviolent, how not to cheat one part of our body to favor another part… how to be content with what we can do today and not be forever greedy. These are the lessons of the yamas. Bringing these lessons into our life makes the practice on the mat meaningful”
By the way, if you can ever get hold of Palkhivala’s book ‘Fire of Love: For Students of Life, For Teachers of Yoga’ (its quite hard to get hold of) its full of such quotable gems and beautifully articulated wisdom, its recommended.
