How to Practice Yoga When You Hate Yoga Studios
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.
maybe that's the point.
