Does yoga need a mirror or not? Before I introduced a friend to practice yoga, I mentioned that I can't practice well without a mirror at home. At that time, my first reaction was yoga. Don't immediately think about whether there is a yoga mat. When did the mirror become the "standard" of yoga?

In my impression, the museum I used to stay in had no mirrors on all sides, and the place near the balcony was a whole floor-to-ceiling window. Other walls are carved with elegant wooden yoga signs, with warm white as the keynote, making it difficult to stay still.

Different from the yoga studio, the yoga room in the gym is basically surrounded by large transparent mirrors. Maybe gyms consider the intensive use of space, and most of them don't have special yoga rooms, which are usually used together with dance rooms, so natural mirrors become standard.

When I first started taking yoga classes in the gym, I always used to peep at myself in the mirror. One is to correct whether my actions are the same as those of the teacher, and the other is to see if I am doing "better" than my peers around me, so as to satisfy my inner desire to compare.

Until I went to the yoga studio, I asked the teacher why there was no mirror in the gym. The teacher said that real yoga doesn't need a mirror. You just need to focus on your heart and start the energy in your body with the teacher's password. On the contrary, the mirror will let you analyze.

So I tried to practice without looking in the mirror and concentrate wholeheartedly on every password the teacher said. From the initial discomfort to the later self-immersion, mirror-free practice made me pay more attention to my body feelings, concentrate wholeheartedly on the teacher's password, and never be at a loss because of my unfamiliar posture again.

When I stopped paying attention to whether my posture was standard or not, I began to realize that my body consciousness was slowly waking up. Breathing, twisting, arm rotation, rib adduction, shoulder sinking, abdominal contraction, every key point of the posture that the teacher said could be quickly transformed into body information and automatically arranged body muscles, and the posture was accurately corrected.

My own practice has not stopped because there is no mirror. On the contrary, after weakening the importance of the mirror, I feel that some parts of my body are opened, and I have more concentration to understand the true meaning of each gesture, not just to imitate it. This practice is undoubtedly efficient.

Just as a bottleneck on the road of practice is broken, there will be many bottlenecks on the long road of yoga. Only by trying to find the most effective method can we complete the layer-by-layer transformation of yoga, otherwise we can only spin around in the same place forever.

Now I am used to not using a mirror, but prefer to listen with my ears and feel the physical and mental nourishment brought by asana with my body. Inadvertently harvest the joy brought by small changes in the body.

Mirror has always been the support of dental bench, so it is a flexible wisdom to get rid of excessive dependence on mirror in time.

If you are still obsessed with the mirror at the moment, try to restrain your strong dependence on the mirror. Mirrors are only used when you need to fine-tune your posture occasionally. Watching yourself practice in front of the mirror will only block your communication with the teacher.

The most commonly used senses in yoga are hearing and touch, not vision. It is the essence of yoga to pay attention to the inside and find the awareness of the body.

I hope you can walk more smoothly and further on the yoga road without mirrors, namaste!

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