10/12/2025
On Boredom
One of my students recently said that yoga had become “boring.” That yoga felt dull, that she longed for something more playful, more expressive, more alive. As if something in the practice had dimmed.
I understand.
Bodies have seasons.
Exploring other forms is natural — sometimes even nourishing.
But there’s confusion there : YOGA IS NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN
— abhyāsa–vairāgyābhyāṁ tan-nirodhaḥ, Yoga Sūtra I.12
The stilling of the mind is achieved through steady practice and detachment.
The Āsana practice was never meant to “keep the body occupied.”
It helps maintaining a healthy, alert body,
but it’s only an entry point, not a destination.
Its purpose is refinement, clarity, and presence —
to reveal what unfolds in breath and inner space.
Boredom often appears when practice becomes routine,
reduced to repetition, to a form of gymnastics.
We start searching outward for stimulation,
switching teachers, styles, methods, craving “more,” craving novelty,
anything to avoid pausing long enough to feel what stirs beneath the surface.
We look outward so we don’t have to listen inward.
— sa tu dīrgha-kāla-nairantarya-satkārāsevitaḥ dṛḍha-bhūmiḥ, Yoga Sūtra I.14
Practice becomes grounded when pursued for a long time, without interruption, and attentiveness.
Yoga is not here to entertain us.
It is here to reveal us.
It does not promise excitement — it offers clarity.
Clarity often asks us to walk through boredom, not around it.
To stay.
To feel what is truly underneath that restlessness.
To return — again — to practice.
And I believe only a personal practice makes this possible.
Otherwise, we grow tired of a teacher’s voice repeating the same things,
waiting to be guided, entertained, or kept moving.
A personal practice teaches us to stand on our own mat,
to meet ourselves without noise,
and to discover — slowly — that boredom is rarely boredom.
It is a threshold.
In the end, what we call boredom is often just the mind resisting stillness.
Yoga asks something else of us:
to remain, to observe,
to meet the place we usually avoid.
That is where the practice actually begins.
F.
