is yoga actually life changing?

I'm Michael Joel Hall. I've been practicing and teaching yoga for over twenty years. I've been the director of operations for a multistudio chain and have incubated my self practice yoga club for over a decade. I'm the founder of Ashtanga Tech — a yoga education platform for people who want to create a practice that serves them, not just the other way around. This is Ashtanga Tech Support. Every episode, I pull a few questions from the yoga and Ashtanga corners of Reddit, and I answer them. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this stuff, but also kind of just answering off the cuff. Don't get it twisted, its serious business but we don't have to be. Ok, lets get into it.

Our Response

Yeah. It is. But probably not in the way you're imagining right now.

You're not going to do yoga for a month and suddenly become a different person. You're going to do yoga for a month and realize you can touch your shins without groaning. That's it. That's the first win. And it's a real one.

The stiffness thing — that sorts itself out faster than you'd expect. A few weeks of consistent practice and your body starts remembering it was designed to move. The mind stuff takes longer. But here's what actually happens: you spend an hour trying not to fall over, and somewhere in that hour, the thing you were anxious about just… loses its grip for a minute. Then you get a few more minutes. Then one day you notice you're sleeping better.

The "I'll quit after two weeks" worry — I respect that. Most honest thing anyone's said about starting a practice. Here's what I'd say: don't commit to yoga. Commit to two weeks. That's it. If you quit after that, fine. No shame. But most people don't, because the body starts asking for it. Not the mind — the body. That's a different kind of motivation, and it's a lot harder to talk yourself out of.

Will it change your life? I've been practicing for over twenty years. I'm not going to tell you it changed mine — it just became part of it. Like breathing. You don't think about whether breathing changed your life. You just notice when you stop.

If you want to understand what the practice is actually doing beyond the physical, we've got a study guide that walks through the philosophy: https://ashtanga.tech/study-guide/asana-philosophy-purpose-definition-purpose-of-asana/

Start. That's the whole secret.

Related Study Guides

• Asana Philosophy Purpose Definition Purpose Of Asana