Yoga is the best for strength!

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Hey everyone, new member here! I’ve been doing yoga for about a year and I am totally hooked!

I was recently telling a friend about yoga and how I’ve seen my teacher and some of the advanced students do some really crazy asanas that require a lot of strength. I know yogi’s do even more advanced asanas than what I’ve seen in person.

To me, I believe that the best yogi’s in the yoga community are the pound for pound strongest individuals in the world. They’re physical strength amazes me!

My friend said that he didn’t agree and that weight lifters are stronger pound for pound.

I wanted was wondering what you guys think. Is he right, or am I right? I think the yogi’s ability to hold their bodyweight in the hardest asanas makes them clearly stronger, pound for pound!

#2

The stronger person is the one who can let go of their craving to be “right”. Whether that is the weight lifter or the yogi…that would have to be evaluated on a person-by-person, case-by-case basis. Try it out with your friend. But remember that letting go of something is not the same as suppressing something.

Yoga is a vast ocean containing many things for human growth (by all definitions and at all levels). Asana is but a cup of water in that ocean.

Clearly muscle is built by increasing the load on that muscle to the point of damaging it then having the body repair that damage. A person on the path of Yoga would be limited to body weight for such things. A weight lifter would not. However, in my experience the person on the path of Yoga may have a heightened ability to place their mind in their doing. Such a skill, we well know, can do all sorts of miraculous things.

As a student of yoga the care relative to strength is only to develop that which is needed for the other work in yoga. Nothing more, nothing less. The soul is the master, the ego but a servant.