A Yoga Practice is an Art Practice
No matter the practice, approach it like an artist.
We’ve written about the connections that exist between yoga and art for so long that it seems a bit redundant to explain why these two practices resemble each other.
Most obviously: they’re both practices — i.e. processes — that people use to unlock or reveal a fundamental truth about themselves, their experiences and zooming further out, the world. Whether you’re going through a sun salutation or writing an outline for a novel, your body is the instrument channelling, experimenting, starting and stopping, potentially revealing something essential. Even if all you do is look at art, simply contemplating a work with your full, crystalline attention can be a creative act because:
(…) looking at art is not just about your eyes; it involves your entire being and calls on every part of you to make sense (or not!) of what’s before you. Looking at art is a full mind-body experience that awakens you to beauty, transforms your self-perception and transfigures the space around you.
Your yoga mat is a piece of paper; what you do there, a sketch.
If you are doing asana, you are engaged in the same process as the one that results in art. Every time you unroll that rectangle of rubber, you have an opportunity to start fresh or revise/adjust a pose in the same way you might erase a pencil line on a drawing that needs refining, or backspace out of a sentence that isn’t quite capturing what you’re trying to convey. By changing your stance on the mat—front becomes back or side becomes front or ground becomes sky—you redraw and reorient your inner compass, change your perspective. It’s the same way an artist might take an assortment of objects, assemble them into various configurations and stand back: to see the familiar through a different lens, to look up from a haystack of scribbles and hear a new song.
The sketch gets clarified, concentrated over time, even during meditation
Meditation-doing is like art-making: it requires exploration, repetition, and minutes and hours spent in dedicated, quiet concentration (hello, Abhyasa!) The more you meditate, the more profound and varied the experience. Even when you feel frustrated by thoughts scratching their way into your awareness or visions interrupting your mantra, you are still engaged in a creative process, one of gently observing, sifting and reassessing what is of value, and releasing what isn’t (hello, Vairagya!) After hours of warm-ups, days and evenings of rehearsals, let go and leave everything on the stage.
And the very next day: return to the barre, the easel, the garden, the bicycle, the yoga mat. Continue the exploration, the learning, the sketching, the refining. Continue tuning your instrument through repeated gestures, falling into an enchanted trance, sharpening your awareness and trusting your intuition.
MORE INSPIRATION ON THE CREATIVE PROCESS:
“‘It’s practice, right?’ she said. ‘It’s like going out there and running five miles. It’s the same idea. Some days, it’ll be really tough and awful. And some days, you’ll see an alligator gilded by the sun.’” —Lauren Groff, novelist
“The artistic process becomes a form of yoga.” —Christopher Davison, artist
“Isak Dinesen once said, ‘I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.’ I write my ten pages the same way. Cool and detached.” —Haruki Murakami, novelist
“Write the Body”, a FREE online workshop, exploring the physical through words with Susanna Harwood Rubin (Sept. 13th, 2023)
“Awaken your Inner Artist: Yoga & Creativity” by Karen Macklin (Yoga International)
😍Love this, M! Brought to mind Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” teachings. We are all creators with the power of the universe and stardust inside us. To be fulfilled, we must express our creativity.
Maybe you won't be surprised that I love this post!
What a fantastic idea with some really tangible examples as well as an expansive philosophical quality.