The Only 2 Yoga Poses You Need

If you want to improve your yoga practice, you only need two poses.

I’ve heard it said a person only ever needs to do two yoga poses: 1) the one they most want to do and 2) the one they’re avoiding.

Your favorite pose and the pose you despise.

That’s it.

Now, when I refer to a pose you’re avoiding or despise, I’m not talking about a pose you aren’t yet able to enter, maintain, and exit safely. I’m also not talking about a pose you shouldn’t do given an injury or other medical consideration. I’m talking about the one you can do safely but don’t because it’s uncomfortable in some way (note: I said uncomfortable here, not painful).

And if you’ve ever been to one of my yoga classes before, you’ve probably heard me say what I’m about to say next:

This is a great metaphor for life.

The whole point of the work we do on the mat is to improve our lives off the mat.

Let’s say, for example, your favorite pose ever is royal dancer.

It makes zero difference to your life if you can bring your foot all the way to your head. Zero.

But, if you love this pose and you do it frequently, you’ll learn and grow a lot from it. On the physical level, you’ll get better at balancing on one foot, which, more than likely, will transfer balance to other aspects of your life. On the emotional/spiritual level, you’ll open yourself up to more joy and a sense of freedom, just like dancing.

And yet, if all you ever did was dancer pose, you’d hurt yourself. The front of the body would be overly lengthened while muscles in the back of the body would get shorter and stronger. Sooner or later, you would develop an overuse injury.

You have to counter the pose with another. On a literal and physical level this would be forward fold. Energetically, however, this might mean child’s pose. Resting after such an active posture. Folding inward and bowing within rather than opening your heart and allowing it to shine out into the world.

But maybe child’s pose is the one you avoid the most. Maybe you think it’s too basic to do anything for you. Maybe it’s uncomfortable because your belly gets in the way. Or maybe you hate the idea of slowing down and pausing. (All my regular students are saying it together right now: “That’s a great metaphor for life.”)

And yet, if you want to improve your practice, you gotta do the pose you’re avoiding.

As much as the one you love.

The interesting thing is these poses will naturally change over time. In fact, the one you’ve been avoiding might just become the one you love the most. (It happened to me with pigeon.) So, just keep doing the “two poses” and your practice will be dramatically enhanced.

Now, back to our metaphor for life: If you want to improve your life, you only need to do two things right now: 1) the thing you most want to do and 2) the thing you’re avoiding doing.

Let’s say, for example, you dream of writing a book. What you really want to do is clean off your desk and create a writing space. You love being organized, and you think if you set the space, you will be more likely to write there in the future. You’re not wrong. Clutter has a way of distracting our energy, so setting the space would be good for your writing.

But, if all you do is clean, organize, and decorate, you’ll find yourself a week into the project and having moved on to repaint the bathroom (which, I’m just guessing, isn’t where you’re gonna be doing your writing).

Why? Because you’re avoiding doing the other most important thing: the actual writing.

At some point, you just have to sit your butt down in the seat and stare at a blank page until something comes out.

The same goes for anything else in your life.

We need to do more of what we love. We need to recharge, reinvigorate, energize ourselves. We need to experience more joy.

But if that’s all we do, we’ll become lethargic. What once brought us joy will become dull. We’ll need more of a dopamine/serotonin/endorphin/oxytocin hit to feel good.

Because the truth is the human brain loves a challenge. It loves to solve a puzzle. It loves to accomplish something. The harder something is, the more rewarding it is to our little noggins.

The more you’re avoiding something, the harder you think it will be (which may or may not turn out to be accurate). But that just means it will be so much sweeter in the end.

So, I’ll say it again: If you want to improve your life, you gotta do two things every day: 1) the thing you most want to do and 2) the thing you’re avoiding doing.

The order in which you do the things is up to you. Maybe you do the thing you love first to give yourself some inspiration. Or maybe you do the thing you’re avoiding to get it out of the way, positioning the thing you love as a sort of reward for after. Your call. Just do the two things. Every single day. And watch your life improve.

I wanna know: What two things are YOU gonna do today to improve your life? Comment below and share with me.

With fierce love,

Chazz