The Path of Yoga: Uniting the Child and the Sage

The path of yoga is the path of transformation — internal, external, a total transformation of life. But, of course, transformation happens only when practice is constant. Practice is the development of your body and consciousness, and when it is steady, you rise along the steps you yourself have built. Breaks in practice can sometimes lift you one step higher, but more often they become a pause that then demands great effort for a new beginning and further growth.

The practice of hatha yoga is an amazingly skillful tool that, on the outside, may look like physical education or acrobatics, depending on the complexity of the asanas. But the real skill lies in how this “physical education” influences our psyche and consciousness — so strongly, in fact, that sometimes it is hard to believe.

The reason I began with the question of consistency in practice is because only through serious and long immersion can you truly understand its essence.

The practice of hatha yoga asanas is the constant preservation and union of your inner child and your inner sage. Without this, it becomes either mere physical exercise for health, or a dangerous sport.

Let me explain in more detail.

When we practice hatha yoga seriously and consistently, we set ourselves certain challenges from time to time. We learn to do with our body what once seemed impossible. And to do something like that, we must in some sense be a child. A child can believe in the impossible. A child does not dwell on the fear of the unknown. A child is simply curious to feel something new, to learn, to explore, simply because this is their nature — to grow, to develop, to move forward. Without curiosity — if you are full of fears, doubts, and worries — you will not step into the unknown. You will repeat the asanas you already know, the ones that keep you healthy, youthful, and fit. And this is good, of course. But it is only the minimum of what practice can give.

On the other side of the scale lies the desire for new sensations, new forms, new states. Often this desire comes from our own narcissism, the urge to raise our self-esteem — because not everyone can do those acrobatic handstands or deep backbends. This is the hunger for form, for outward display. And this desire is very strong, because we are used to showing ourselves. We feel we “must” do it, we “must” be better, stronger, more beautiful. We live in an age of triumph of the external.

This approach often leads to injuries in practice. Because the wish to speed up the process, to quickly conquer some cherished asana, overshadows the voice of our inner sage.

Without the inner sage, hatha yoga is reduced to an acrobatic sketch. Only the inner sage can calmly observe what happens inside us while we are in an asana — without attachment to the result, simply being in the moment, meditating in it, living it. From this deep, patient observation, a new form for the body can emerge — created when the body itself understands and is ready. The inner sage knows that the body is always changing, and each new day requires the same awareness, the same patience, the same observation, even in the same old asanas, not only in new ones.

Patience and passion, meditation and aspiration, awareness and curiosity, calmness and courage — all of these must come together in the practice of hatha yoga. Then it is growth. Then it is Yoga.