#authenticpractice

the stockholm studio was beautiful. floor-to-ceiling mirrors, blonde wood floors, expensive candles burning. i settled into warrior two, surrounded by bodies in matching athletic gear, and caught myself doing it.

comparing.

her arms were perfectly parallel. mine wobbled. i adjusted, checked the mirror again, tried to look serene.

and then i realized: i'd forgotten to breathe for the past three poses.

this wasn't yoga anymore, this was performance.

when studios stopped working

seven years ago in barcelona (where i'm from), i found a small yoga studio in gràcia. no mirrors, just old wood floors and incense. on mat, my body would soften for the first time in weeks.

it was simple. it was good.

when i moved to gothenburg, sweden (where i live now), i tried to recreate that feeling. i visited the recommended studios - bright, expensive spaces with perfect lighting.

the teachers were skilled. the sequences were solid. but something felt off.

the mirrors showed me my alignment, but they also showed me everyone else's.

the expensive membership made me feel like i should achieve something.

the athletic environment turned practice into subtle competition.

i'd come seeking quiet and leave feeling inadequate.

this was the same pattern i fell into - when practice becomes performance rather than presence.

what i was actually looking for

what drew me to yoga wasn't flexibility or impressive poses, it was breath.

the way my scattered mind could anchor in my body.

the possibility of being present with what is.

in rishikesh, india (where i did my yoga training), guru devendra would laugh at our western obsession with physical poses.

"you think yoga is touching your toes," he'd say. "but yoga is what happens when you learn to stay."

that simplicity...that willingness to be with what's uncomfortable without decorating it.

that's what i wanted.

but studio culture - the mirrors, the comparison, the unspoken hierarchy - kept pulling my attention outward when the practice is meant to turn it inward.

the teacher who set me free

i almost gave up on yoga in gothenburg.

then i found sara lindström's small studio near haga (a neighborhood here).

no mirrors. uneven floors. sara taught in swedish and broken english, her approach more philosophical than athletic.

"suave, suave," she'd say, soft, soft, when someone pushed too hard.

one evening after class, i stayed to help fold blankets.

"you look tense," she observed.

i tried to explain the comparison, the performance anxiety, the feeling i wasn't doing yoga "right" anymore.

she nodded, kept folding.

then: "maybe you don't need the studio. maybe you need to remember why you started."

the paradox was perfect.

a teacher who helped me realize i could practice alone.

building a practice at home

i started practicing in my apartment. just me, my old mat, the window overlooking cobblestones.

at first, i used adriene mishler's videos. her approach felt unpretentious, focused on how practice feels rather than how it looks.

i'd roll out my mat at dawn, before the city woke.

luna (my cat) would watch from the radiator, unimpressed by my discipline.

without mirrors, i had to listen differently.

i couldn't see if my alignment was perfect, so i had to feel whether it was honest.

the questions changed when nobody was watching.

i learned to build my practice around breath, not achievement.

some mornings i'd flow through sequences.

other mornings i'd spend twenty minutes in child's pose, letting tension soften.

nobody saw me practice, i had nothing to prove.

what i kept simple

one mat. two blocks. one strap. one bolster.

i didn't need fancy props or perfect space.

i just needed to show up.

most mornings, my practice was unremarkable.

no impressive poses. no breakthrough moments.

just the same basic asanas i'd done a thousand times.

forward folds that showed me where i was tight.

hip openers that revealed what i was holding.

savasana where my nervous system could finally rest.

this ordinary practice taught me more about yoga than any studio class ever had.

the spiritual dimension

here's what i discovered with only luna as witness:

the spiritual dimension of yoga doesn't require community or guidance.

it requires honesty.

in studios, i'd performed presence.

at home, i had to actually be present.

the yoga sutras talk about pratyahara - withdrawal from external objects.

practicing alone taught me this meant withdrawing from comparison...from the need to be seen doing it right.

when i practiced in studios, my attention scattered across the room.

at home, my attention could finally come back to the only thing that mattered: this breath, this body, this moment.

i wasn't trying to become more flexible, i was learning to honor where my body was today.

some mornings that edge was soft.

other mornings my body asked for gentleness.

at home, i could listen without shame.

what's different now

i still take sara's class sometimes. once a month, maybe.

but the core of my practice lives in my apartment now.

when i do go to class, i notice the difference.

i close my eyes during poses instead of watching mirrors.

i focus on breath instead of scanning the room.

the studio doesn't make me anxious anymore because i don't need it to validate my practice.

the quiet morning

this morning, i rolled out my mat in pre-dawn darkness.

luna was still sleeping. the apartment was cold, the city quiet.

i sat cross-legged, felt my breath, waited for my body to tell me what it needed.

no impressive poses.

just gentle hip openers, a few rounds of cat-cow, a long savasana with my hand on my heart.

unremarkable. ordinary. nobody saw me practice.

and that's exactly what made it yoga.

the studio didn't fail me, i just needed to remember that yoga was never about the room.

it was always about breath, and breath doesn't need an audience.

if studios make you anxious, if the mirrors and comparison are pulling you away from why you started...

maybe you don't need to fix your relationship with studios.

maybe you need to remember that practice can happen anywhere.

in your living room, with your worn mat, with nobody watching.

maybe that's not a compromise.

there is a specific kind of shame that arrives quietly, without warning.

i was sitting in a café near järntorget, halfway through a cheese sandwich, when a yoga teacher i knew walked through the door. i saw her before she saw me, and my first instinct was to lower the sandwich below the table.

i held it there, hidden, while she looked for a seat. she spotted me, we talked briefly, she ordered a coffee. she didn't notice what i was eating.

but i had hidden a sandwich.

i drove home thinking about that small, automatic gesture. when had i started policing myself like this? when had bread and cheese become something to conceal from another person who practices yoga?

i had no clear answer. only a slow recognition that something had been building for a long time.

❆

the rules nobody wrote down

nobody gave me a list when i started practicing seriously. no document outlining what a proper yogi eats, wears, reads, or believes. and yet over years of classes and communities and quiet social observation, i absorbed a very clear picture.

she was plant-based, ideally vegan. she spoke carefully, used the right words. her body was flexible and lean. her social media was soft-toned and intentional.

the rules didn't arrive all at once, they accumulated - each one feeling less like external expectation and more like a natural extension of my values. that's what made them difficult to question.

here's what i know now: the rules and the practice are not the same thing. i joined yoga looking for stillness. what i didn't expect was the identity that came alongside the poses - the quiet pressure to perform not just the physical practice but a whole way of being. that weight was something i'd later recognise as spiritual ego doing what it does best: disguising itself as devotion.

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when values become armour

i became vegan in 2013, motivated by ethics and ahimsa. for a long time, that choice was genuine.

but somewhere along the way, the ethics became identity. i'd mention it in contexts where it wasn't relevant - as though it were a credential. when someone ate differently, i felt distance. not judgment, exactly. but a subtle separation.

the body started asking questions in 2023. hair thinning, energy draining. a doctor was kind: the values were beautiful, but my biology needed something different.

i resisted. changing my diet felt like losing part of who i was.

researchers call this healthism - the idea that health choices become a moral identity, and that departing from them feels like a failure of character rather than a neutral adjustment. i didn't have that word then. i only knew that eating an egg felt less like a dietary decision and more like a small betrayal.

my body knew what it needed before my values could catch up… i eventually listened. the practice didn't collapse. it softened.

❆

what performance actually costs

when performance is the goal - even a subtle, internal performance - something leaves the body.

i'd be in a pose. breath correct. alignment looking right. and something essential still absent. the body moving through postures while part of my mind stayed at a distance, watching, adjusting for effect.

sara's studio was different - small, unmirrored, quiet. she'd offer sthira sukham as invitation, not directive. even there, though, i carried my own internal audience, on mat, watching myself from the outside.

the exhaustion of that watching was something i hadn't named until it lifted.

❆

the turn

an ordinary tuesday morning. no special intention. living room before the light had arrived, luna near my feet, no phone, no mirror.

the body moved through a sequence and i wasn't directing it. just - there. breathing, one pose arriving from the last.

not dramatic… just something put down that i hadn't realised i was still carrying.

there's research on exercise motivation that finds people with open goals - flexible intentions rather than rigid targets - show higher enjoyment and longer adherence than those chasing fixed performance measures. my body had already understood this. practice became sustainable the moment it stopped needing to prove anything.

❆

what remains

practice now is an imperfect hour, sometimes less. luna occasionally decides the mat is hers. after a long session i make tortilla española - potatoes and eggs, my mother's recipe - and eat at the kitchen table looking out at the river.

not instagram-ready. mine.

my grandmother cooked what the season offered, without commentary. she ate with pleasure, fed others with love, never suggested that food was a statement about who she was. in stillness of that memory, i see what she was showing me - the ease of a life not performed for anyone's approval.

the practice is smaller now, and more honest. i think that's what it was always trying to become.

❆

i went back to that café recently. ordered a pastry without thinking twice. the same yoga teacher was there, eating a sandwich of her own.

we waved. nothing had to be hidden.

the sandwich was never the problem…

the performance was.