Yoga is not just an exercise; it’s a lifestyle. It means living a meditative, mindful life.

Recently, a friend told me, “I suck at yoga.” I told her there’s no such thing. Maybe we can’t do the poses exactly correctly; maybe we can’t keep our knees straight or lift our leg as high as others. But as long as it leads to a good feeling (a physical, mental, and spiritual feeling), the exercise is a success. After a hatha yoga workout, I feel both energized and relaxed at the same time. My muscles are alert, but my soul is calm. This is similar to the way I feel after a good 20-30 minutes of meditation. The yoga poses do for the body what meditation does for the mind.

Any activity that requires coordination between mind and body, or between different parts of the body, can be yoga. I’m teaching myself to play the sitar. Now that really takes coordination – sitting cross-legged, with back straight, keeping the instrument balanced while strumming with one hand and moving the other hand up and down the long neck.

Unless we’re superhuman (which may be a big “unless”), yogic activities are impossible to do perfectly. But that very impossibility is what makes them such good yoga. By doing things that are impossible, or at least very difficult, to perfect, we train ourselves not to get frustrated. And by constantly improving on them, we at least hold out the possibility of perfection. The Yoga Sutras talk about masters of yoga being able to levitate or inhabit other people’s bodies. Now if those aren’t reasons to start a yoga practice immediately, I don’t know what is.