Progress: Beyond Postures
March Gathering of The Listening Space — Sunday, March 1, 2026 @ 12:45
The Measure of Progress
At some point in a yoga practice, almost everyone encounters it: the feeling of being stuck. A pose that isn't opening, a pattern that isn’t shifting, a sense that something that used to feel alive has gone quiet.
We call it a plateau. But before we talk about how to move through it, maybe it's worth asking a more interesting question first: how are we measuring progress in our yoga practice in the first place?
The Visible Ledger of Progress
It's easy to understand why asana becomes the default scorecard. Poses are visible, measurable, and comparable. Did you bind in Marichyasana D? Are you dropping back? Can you float through the transition? The poses give us milestones, and milestones feel like evidence that something is happening.
There's nothing wrong with that. The physical dimension of practice matters — it's real, it's immediate, and the body's gradually opening is genuinely meaningful. But when the progression of postures becomes the primary — or only — way we evaluate our practice, something quietly goes missing.
Because yoga was never designed to be a flexibility sport.
An Older Map
The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, the classical text that forms the philosophical backbone of much of what we call yoga today, uses a word that appears everywhere in the early sutras: chitta vritti. It translates roughly as the fluctuations of the mind — its restlessness, its tendency to grasp and avoid, to compare, to wander.
And the opening definition of yoga — yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ — is simply the settling of those fluctuations. Not the perfecting of form. Not the achieving of advanced postures. The quieting of the mind's noise.
Patañjali also describes the eight limbs of yoga, ashtanga, which include ethical commitments (yamas and niyamas), breath (pranayama), sense withdrawal (pratyahara), concentration (dharana), meditation (dhyana), and ultimately absorption (samadhi). Asana is one of those eight limbs — and even then, the Sutras describe the purpose of asana not as mastery but as sthira sukham asanam: steadiness and ease.
This is a very different picture of progress.
What If the Plateau Is the Practice?
A plateau often feels like stagnation, but it may be something else entirely. It can be a moment when the practice is quietly doing its most important work — not in the tissues and joints, but in the subtler dimensions of attention, patience, and relationship with ourselves.
The posture that hasn't changed in two years might be teaching us something about how we meet frustration. The practice that feels flat might be asking us to look for something other than sensation. The repetition that feels like nothing might be building a quality of steadiness that doesn't announce itself.
Progress in these areas rarely feels dramatic. It doesn't photograph well. But it shows up in how we respond when things don't go the way we want — on the mat, and off it.
This is what the tradition points toward: not the achievement of a pose, but the quality of presence we bring to any pose, any moment.
Rethinking What "Advanced" Means
If we take the tradition seriously, then perhaps an advanced practitioner isn't someone who can perform a challenging posture — it's someone who can sit in stillness without distraction, who can move through difficulty without compulsive reaction, who brings the same quality of attention to a simple forward fold as to the most demanding sequence.
That changes things. It means the practitioner working with a modified form, attending carefully to breath and sensation, might be doing something far more sophisticated than someone executing a complicated shape on autopilot.
It also means that progress can look like letting go of certain ambitions, slowing down, or returning to foundational practices with fresh eyes. These aren't regressions. They might be exactly where the practice deepens.
An Invitation
For this month's gathering, rather than arriving with answers, I'd like to invite us to sit with the question itself. What does progress mean to you — and has that meaning shifted over time? What have you been measuring, and is it still the right measure?
There's no single answer. The practice looks different for everyone, and that's the point. But the conversation itself — the honest, curious, collective inquiry — is very much in the spirit of what yoga is for.
Come as you are. Bring what's alive for you.
Questions for Reflection
You might sit with these before we meet, bring them to your mat, or simply let them surface during the gathering:
When you think about your yoga practice, what does "progress" mean to you? Where does that idea come from?
Have you ever felt "stuck" in your practice? Looking back, what was actually happening during that time?
Do you think of yoga primarily as a physical practice? What would it mean to expand that definition?
Is there a difference between a "beginner" and an "advanced" practitioner — and if so, what is it?
Has your understanding of what yoga is changed since you began practising?
What would it feel like to let go of any goal in practice — even temporarily? What would you be left with?
Is there something your practice has taught you that has nothing to do with your body?
The Listening Space is a free monthly gathering open to all yoga students, regardless of style or experience. No preparation is required — only a willingness to reflect and share.
Sunday, March 1 @ 12:45 — The Breathing Space, Amsterdam