Getting Good

It’s very common for new students to ask me some version of the same question: “How long will it take me to get good at yoga?”

What they really mean is: When will I be able to do the full expression of all those fancy poses?

My response is always the same. Yoga isn’t a competitive sport, and getting good at yoga isn’t about being able to do flashy poses.

Of course, I know that answer is usually unsatisfying. I can practically hear the response: Yeah, yeah, I know there’s a deeper side to yoga than flexibility. But I mean the physical practice. When will I actually get good?

But even at the physical level, “getting good” isn’t the same as becoming capable of increasingly difficult poses.

Imagine someone jumping onto a set of gymnastics rings and holding an iron cross. If they can do it, they’re good at gymnastics. The performance itself demonstrates the skill.

But yoga isn’t like that. The pose isn’t the accomplishment. The pose is something we are using.

A better analogy would be getting good at training for gymnastics. Being good at training means knowing how to get the most out of each session: how hard to push, when to back off, and how to adjust the training to your particular body. A naturally gifted athlete might perform an extraordinary gymnastic skill without knowing anything about how to train effectively.

The same is true in yoga.

Some people can walk into their first yoga class and effortlessly fold in half or drop into a split. Someone else may practice for ten years and never do the same thing. That tells us something about their respective bodies. It tells us next to nothing about which one is “better” at yoga.

So if being good at yoga means becoming good at using the poses, how do we use a pose in a way that extracts every last drop of physical benefit? 

Yoga has an answer: the trick is not to maximize the physical challenge; the trick is to optimize it.

Patañjali gives us a wonderfully concise formula for this in the Yoga Sūtras: sthira-sukham āsanam—which might be rendered as “asana is firm but relaxed.”

Those two qualities have to exist together. There must be enough sthira—stability, firmness, effort—to give the body something to work with. But there must also be sukha—ease, comfort, the absence of unnecessary strain. Too little effort gives us nothing to work with; too much and we’re working against ourselves.

We are looking for the right balance—and yoga gives us a simple way to find it: the breath.

Make the pose challenging, but maintain smooth, deliberate, unforced breathing. When you can no longer do that, adding more difficulty isn’t adding more yoga. The physical skill isn’t learning to tolerate as much strain as possible. It’s learning to distinguish necessary effort from unnecessary tension—and gradually teaching the body that it can have one without the other.

With practice, we become increasingly sensitive to that distinction. We notice where we grip when we don’t need to grip, where we brace against sensation, where we hold the breath, and where effort in one part of the body creates unnecessary tension somewhere else. 

That sensitivity – not the pose you use to develop it – is the core of getting good at yoga.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that as we practice, the body adapts. We become stronger and more mobile, and poses that once gave us plenty to work with become easy. So naturally, we begin exploring deeper or more demanding variations.

But the increased difficulty isn’t the progress. It’s often just the new dose required to produce the same effect.

Imagine someone who takes medication to manage a condition. If their body eventually develops a tolerance and needs a higher dose to achieve the same effect, it would be absurd to say they’ve become better at managing their condition. Taking more isn’t the skill. Knowing the appropriate dose is the skill.

The same is true of asana. Getting good at yoga isn’t about how much you can do. It’s about becoming sensitive enough to know how much you need.

So how long does it take to get good at yoga? The good news is that you don’t have to wait for your body to catch up. Whatever your physical condition, with the right attention you can begin practicing yoga fully on your very next breath. The bad news—or, depending on how you look at it, the great news—is that cultivating this attention is a lifelong pursuit.