'Power' Yoga

By Laura Butcher

In Ayurvedic terms, I am ‘Pitta’. I wouldn’t have known what that was a year ago, essentially it means ‘fire’ - I am driven, fast paced, firey. But, too much fire turns to ash. When I worked in the city, it didn’t matter how much I slept or ate, I couldn’t find energy. Yoga saved me in that way, it was like opening my fuel cap and filling up to the top - I couldn’t believe it, I found the cure to burn out.

This was a huge step for me, to cut down on 10K runs and spin classes and take an hour to do yoga. OK it was hot power yoga, but yoga nonetheless!

And I think that’s how people start, the amount of times I have heard... ‘I don’t mind doing yoga if it’s power yoga because I’m stilling doing something’. There are SO many benefits to power yoga, it will always be my first love and saviour, and if that is what it takes to attract people into yoga then I’m thrilled. Especially if it is Baptiste power yoga because those teachers / studios focus on empowerment - promoting self-care, listening to your body, resting when you need to and being the change you want to see in the world. Rather than the misconception of ‘power’ being arm balances and inversions. Such poses can be, and often are, included in Baptiste classes as options, so that you can overcome fear and develop inner confidence both on and off the mat, but it is the psychological empowerment that is championed, not your physical strength, that is merely a positive bi-product.

Having come to the realization that it was about emotional empowerment not physical power, both through my teaching and my own personal practice, I am now at a different stage in my journey. I realised that in a way power yoga still feeds my hungry wolf. So often there is growth in challenge, and my true challenge is not in doing more, but in being ok with doing less.

For me, the irony was, just like fire turning to ash, through excessive power I was becoming powerless. Yet again, I faced burn out and this time there was no one or nothing to blame but myself. Things I’ve blamed previously include…my high-pressured school, my father’s high expectations, my high-pressured advertising job, owning my own business, this list goes on. All of which probably contributed to, but were absolutely not solely to blame for my continuous burn out. Let’s be honest, I’m a yoga teacher – it could be worse!

I had managed to take on so much again (even in the yoga world!) that I wasn’t doing anything as well as I would have liked. I was neglecting my members’ personal needs (the whole point I started my business, my passion), I barely saw my friends never mind my family in Surrey and my relationship with Sam had also taken the hit. I hated all of that, but I didn’t know how to stop. I was stuck, exhausted yet needing to keep moving - with real bills to pay and a business in Worcester that had grown so fast and had bigger, more demanding challenges on the fast approaching horizon, I was scared.

This is when the power of the body kicked in, I couldn’t have physically done a power class and I didn’t want to, all I wanted was Yin and even that felt hard, I needed stillness. I hardly knew anything about Yoga Nidra, but from the little I did know, I knew that I needed it. Nidra is a powerful self-enquiry practice – I will be writing about it, putting on a workshop and then introducing regular classes so that the practice can be understood fully before putting it on the schedule.

Yoga means to yoke or to bring together, we do that through our community, but we must also bring together all styles of the practice to have balance. We need the Yin and the Yang. The benefits of power yoga are endless, like fire, in balance. To ensure you are being empowered, not becoming powerless, it is essential to incorporate the restorative elements of yoga like Yin, Nidra and meditation - this is the reason I choose not to be a ‘power studio’ and why we are moving in such a particular direction with the company. A company will only survive with true passion and that is how I feel again, a phoenix springs to mind.