What does it mean to be good at yoga?

This is an interesting question, one that gets at the heart of what makes yoga interesting and special.

When we think about running, for instance, it's clear what it means to be good -- you run fast or far. Maybe it's a little more complex than that, you run smoothly, elegantly, but basically it's about running fast and far. What does it mean to cook well? You turn out good food, that's pretty much all there is to it. But what does it mean to be good at yoga? If you can do a perfect split, does that mean you're good at yoga? Touch your chest to your thigh in parsvatanasana? Bring your pelvis totally perpendicular to the floor in arda chandrasana?

These things don't necessarily mean you are good at yoga, skilled.

I always think of this friend of mine, she was just born with these wide-open earth mother hips. She could stack her shins perfectly in ankle-to-knee and lay her belly and chest on the ground, and she'd say "is there anything I can do to make this hard?" She could pretty much do the same in full lotus too, and she could do lots of the other flexibility-oriented poses with barely any effort. Does this make her 'good' at yoga?

Turns out she was pretty good at yoga, but she could do those things I mentioned when she first started, before she barely knew what yoga was. She was just blessed with amazing range of motion in her hips, so she could easily do these poses that many very experienced yoga practitioners (including myself) still can't come close to.

So what makes you good at yoga? Where is the skill? Of course, this isn't an easy thing to answer. But still we have to try.

My favorite answer comes from Eric Schiffman, in his book 'Moving into Stillness.' My current definition which follows, comes close to what he says in this book.

What makes the physical practice of yoga so interesting and challenging is that most of the poses involve both flexibility and strength. Or rather, as Schiffman puts it, yield and push. You have to yield to move deeper into the poses, at the same time that you have to push, exert some effort, to get into and hold them. There is a balancing act every time you go into any of the poses, between push and yield, between strength and flexibility, effort and relaxation, etc.

And there is no 'answer' as to how much of each you need in a given pose; each instance of each pose the yogi has to find the balance, the edge. And 'working the edge', as Schiffman puts it, is where most of the real skill in yoga comes from.

Pushing, effort, strength, these are never the full answer to a pose. I get very discouraged with the number of yoga teachers who act like personal trainers, emphasizing effort above all else. But neither is yielding or relaxing more always the answer. Rather, you have to do both, push and yield. And how much of both you do, there's no answer to that either. You must find your own edge, your balance between these two different energies. And that edge is always changing.

So your skill in yoga is understanding this edge, and working with it. Maybe pushing a little more today, if pushing is appropriate for you today. Maybe yielding a little more tomorrow, if tomorrow is right for yielding. Only you know the balance that you need to strike, and finding that balance is not easy, and it requires experience, practice, and focus. There lies the skill in yoga.