​So What Is All This Yoga Malarkey?
By Fraser Ayres
Part 1 - What Yoga is...

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I remember when I first came to “the invisible side of life” and I was astounded as to how I wasn't levitating after the first week…

With a typical “monkey mind” meditation didn’t sit very well with me. Actually, I didn’t sit very well in meditation. The promise of calm, quiet and peace seemed to be the opposite of what I found when I tried to sit and turn inward.

My restless thoughts aimed squarely at some sort of vague idea of nothingness would do everything but hit its invisible mark. Shopping lists, things to do, random memories or just plain “fug”. And when it wasn’t basic mimblings, my mind would play the game that all children in the back of a car on a long, long  journey are known to play: “Are we there yet? Is this it? Am I doing it right? Are we there yet?”



I couldn’t get myself out of the way enough to just sit. Like all the books over and over kept telling me too. Clear your mind, focus on one thing, focus on No Thing. You know the drill. There was no serene quiet where I was looking.  And then I found myself through a chain of events looking into the Hindu/Vedic system that is known as “Hatha Yoga”. 

A system of physical postures, breathing exercises and cleansing techniques to use the body as a vehicle for mental, physical and spiritual uplift. If your body came with an instruction manual, then Hatha Yoga would be it.

From the tales of consciousness raising, the malleable forms that the body could twist itself into and a gamut of stories and semi-mystical promises of how to engage the mind, body and evolve, it seemed made for me and so I began practicing the “Asana’s” or postures.

Now, I wasn’t flexible. I was awkward and had the same level of bodily awareness as plankton. People say "I'm not bendy", well neither was I.

I was more brittle. Unlike most physical exertions where it’s “no pain, no gain” Yoga rewards you for taking things easy. It is the relaxed state which enables the flexibility and progress, not the stress and strain. It actually stops working if you’re exerting too much. You don’t need to push your limits with the poses. Yoga cultivates a space where your limits find you...

Slowly but surely not only did my body transform, my internal landscape did too. The restless mind started to subside over time. Living in this bustling life, the mind can become so cluttered, that when we then sit trying to get it to stop engaging, it  is nigh on impossible. 

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With Yoga, its essence is to engage the mind and channel it into the practice. Not to switch it off. Yoga approaches the mind, ego, whatever you’d like to call those whirring cogs, from the side rather than from the front. The change in mind is an effortless by-product of the practice, not the practice itself.

Rather than a regimented 20 minutes of forced goodness each day, I found that Yoga seemed to permeate my life even when I wasn’t performing  the poses. My health improved, I became more physically aware, more serene  in my day to day dealings, more mindful, more confident.  I didn’t even have to try and be more focused, I simply was.

These changes in ourselves feed back into the “invisible” things, like yoga and meditation or just feeling nice which then in turn improves our lives, which then feed...you get the picture.

The yoga deepens and evolves as you do and vice-versa. No quicker. No slower.

For me Yoga has provided a wondrous foundation for the rest of my life, and opened up doors of possibility within my world and within myself that I could never have predicted.

I look back, and to think I hesitated...

Fraser Ayres is an Actor, Yoga teacher and Reiki master. He also teaches a wide variety of 1to1 courses including meditation and mindful breathing, dream yoga and other weird and wonderful subjects.

Further articles:-
Pt 2. So what is Yoga...really?
Pt 3. How do i get me some of that Yoga?