03/10/2025
When we first step onto the mat, yoga can feel like it’s all about the poses.
We focus on how flexible we are, how balanced we feel, whether or not we can “do” the posture.
But over time, something shifts. We begin to see that yoga is not just about shapes we make with our bodies. It’s a mirror, a microcosm of how we show up in the world. The way we breathe through challenge, soften into resistance, or meet ourselves with compassion on the mat becomes a practice for living more awake and more kind off the mat.
This poem is my reflection on what it truly means to be a yogi...
To Be a Yogi
To be a yogi
is not to conquer the body,
but to surrender to its wisdom,
and let the breath guide you home.
It is not the handstand,
but the way you fall,
and bow to the floor
as if it were an old friend.
To be a yogi
is to break open in savasana,
to weep quietly for no reason at all,
to feel the world resting in your chest.
It is to welcome the tremble in your thighs,
the stubborn ache in your back,
the chaos of thoughts -
and call them holy visitors.
To be a yogi
is to wake up
in the very moment you would normally fall asleep.
To notice the pattern
that keeps repeating itself -
the same reactions, the same stories -
and to breathe a little deeper,
to choose a kinder path.
On the mat,
we practice this awakening:
we soften when the body tenses,
we meet resistance with curiosity,
we breathe into discomfort.
And then we carry this knowing
into the world beyond the mat—
into our families, our work, our struggles.
What we discover in these four corners of practice
becomes a way of moving
through the vastness of life.
To be a yogi
is to live inside the question,
to stop waiting for answers,
to discover the posture of presence
in traffic, in heartbreak,
in the grocery line,
in the silence between words.
It is to know
that every inhale connects you,
every exhale frees you,
and even the smallest breath
is the universe moving through you.
It is to understand
that my past and future are only stories,
but this breath, this presence,
is who I truly am.
To be a yogi
is simply this:
to fall in love with the ordinary,
to stand barefoot on the earth,
and whisper,
I am here. I am alive. I am enough.
