Yoga is a Practice, Not a Performance
Yoga Is a Practice, Not a Performance is a podcast that explores what yoga was meant to be—not something to perfect, but something to live as originally prescribed by the Sutras. Join hosts Anthony and Emily as they move beyond poses, social media, and performance culture to have honest conversations about philosophy, science, psychology, mindfulness, movement, and everyday life.
Whether you're stepping onto a mat for the first time or have practiced for years, each episode offers practical insights to help you cultivate presence, resilience, and a deeper connection to yourself. Because yoga isn't about looking the part—it's about practicing the art of being human. With the goal of yoga being to "calm the fluctuations of the mind", this podcast is about remembering the true purpose of why yoga really exists.
Yoga is a Practice, Not a Performance
What is flow and finding it in your yoga practice.
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In the fast-paced world we live in, many people seek ways to achieve a state of flow – that magical moment when time stands still, and everything else fades away. In today’s episode, we dive into the concept of flow, especially in the context of yoga, exploring how to cultivate this state through intentional practice, set sequencing, and mindful enjoyment.
With insights from yoga instructors Emily and Tony, this post will guide you through understanding flow and how to integrate it into your daily routines for a fulfilling experience.
All right. Here we are. Episode two. How are we feeling?
SPEAKER_00I'm excited that Lexi is here.
SPEAKER_01I know, right? We got a third third uh person here, Lexi Garuji Berry. Sitting right next to me for you though for those of you watching. So Yeah, we'll see what she has to the conversation. I'm sure it's gonna be quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00And for those of you not watching, she is our cat. Yes. Lexi is a cat, sorry.
SPEAKER_01Alright, what's today's episode about?
SPEAKER_00Today's episode is about flow. We'll also talk about set sequencing and how that relates to finding flow states. And also talking about enjoyment and entertainment uh in a yoga practice.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Let's roll right in. We got our set questions as we always do, get you the most value from these episodes. So we have some structure and like assembly. Yeah, let's get let's kick it off here with the questions.
SPEAKER_00All right. So yoga classes today always say find your flow. What exactly is flow? So Tony here is our flow expert. I have learned a lot from him. I've we together have this flow workshop. So I'm gonna first start by giving just kind of a basic what's the big takeaway that I've taken from him, and then he'll go into more detail. So a flow state is where if you've ever been driving and all of a sudden you lose track of time and you're like, wow, I don't even remember how I got here. That's a flow state. So time can speed up, it can slow down, it's when you're in the zone. It has to do with challenge and skills and balancing those. And when uh the challenge and skill ratio is balanced, you're in the flow channel. When you have too much challenge, that can lead to anxiety. So for me as a high school teacher, there was a lot of challenge there, and lots of anxiety. If there is too little challenge, then that can lead to boredom. All right, you want to explain?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's awesome. So as Emily kind of indicated, we got all the props today. We drew this out for those that you can hopefully see on the video here. But yeah, if you were to plot on a XY Cartesian, you know, system here, we'd have challenge versus skills, right? And as Emily said, you know, when you balance these challenge and skills, you find what's called a flow channel. And what's cool about, you know, flow states is that when you say find your flow, yoga's got it built in to where we meet what's called the antecedents of flow. So there's three things to get you in a flow state. You need to have these challenge to skill, and we're gonna go over that in a in a moment here, uh, balanced here, that ratio relative to you, the clear goals, and then immediate feedback. And one thing that I want to say before we dive into the nitty-gritty of this awesome plot here from the psychologist Mihai Chicks at Mihai, who did all this fantastic work. He's got a book called Flow, which I recommend you all read for those wanting to learn more about it from the psychology standpoint, is that modern-day neuroscience has actually found that when you're in flow states, there's a couple theories. The one I resonate with is where the if you touch your forehead right now, if you're driving, obviously keep one hand on the wheel, but if you touch your hand to your forehead, when you're in a flow state, the relative activity in your brain will sort of it diminishes. And what you start to see is alpha theta brain waves, and we're going to go over that in a little bit. But what's cool is that you're in that zone, like Emily talked about, when you're driving, right? And when you get out of a class sometimes and it was 60 minutes and it felt like five minutes went by, you've experienced flow yourself.
SPEAKER_00How can you elaborate on goals, feedback, and how that relates to a yoga practice?
SPEAKER_01So the one example we love to talk about, right, is the Warrior 3, right? And you know, if we indicate in the class that, you know, students are to do Vera Bhadrasna three, hopefully you've led up to the warmups, the component parts to get students ready for that, right? And you know, that's a clear goal, right? So when students have this idea of the clear goal, that's one antecedent to flow. So the feedback right away when you're lifting. So picture if you don't know what Warrior Three is, imagine you've got one leg standing on the ground, you're lifting the other leg behind you, and you're sending the torso forward. So you look like a T, if you will, on the on the yoga mat.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes known as like airplane.
SPEAKER_01Airplane, right? Exactly. Other variations, absolutely, where the arms are. No, thank you. And right away, if you could imagine, because we're all fighting gravity, all of us every day, when you lift that back leg, you feel gravity, right? Even though the leg anatomically is in neutral, it's the standing leg that's doing sort of the action, if you will, from you know the hip flexion standpoint. But with the back leg, you feel the weight of gravity. So that's immediate feedback. So the challenge, of course, is okay, you have in your mind this T sort of posture in your lower body, upper body. And now it's the application of the skill where you're showing up on your practice, you've practiced hip flexion, you've practiced shoulder flexion to get the arms out in front. So when you can balance the challenge and skill there with the feedback of gravity to hit that warrior three, all those perfect things align, you're in a flow state.
SPEAKER_00So for me, I feel like flow is important in a yoga practice because it helps me be present and really kind of go inward. Now, you know a lot about flow. If I were to get into a flow state in my morning yoga practice, would that make me more likely to have flow states later on in my day? Also, I'm just curious like how many flow states a day can you have? And if you had one in the morning, does that kind of set you up for getting into them easier?
SPEAKER_01Like, so good questions there, right? So flow is very taxing on the brain. So, first of all, I guess I'm doing my PhD in psychology looking at flow in the workplace, which you can readily apply that sort of black and white graph that we showed to anything that we do. And when we talk about finding flow, especially from the neuroscience standpoint, you mentioned something great in the morning. So when you're sleeping, you're hopefully in delta brain waves, the lowest frequency of brain waves that you have. Then there's theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. And you know, when you're in a flow state again, you're in that alpha theta brain state. So the best time to do any sort of meditation, moving meditation of yoga is actually in the morning, because you're coming out of delta brain waves from asleep, from sleeping. And now you're bringing in just enough stimuli, right, to get the clear goals, that feedback. The brain's kind of working a little bit, right, to get into that warrior three. Maybe first thing in the morning might be brutal. Um, but so in the morning is a good time to find flow. Now, to kind of answer the question, how many times can you find flow? I have designed my day to be in a flow state. So we talked about on the previous episode that Stephen Cotler mentioned that flow is this optimal state of consciousness, right? And we said that the yogis had it right where they were in these flow states, right? They didn't have that language at the time, but they were doing it right. And so the thing about flow, though, is that you're not going to be, it's not like cloud nine, you're not high all the time, right? It's not like a it's it is a drug. There's quite the concoction of things going on in your brain that are related to drugs, if you will, in a safe sense. Um, of course, there's a dark side to anything. But Stephen Cotler further goes on in his book, The Rise of Superman, he talks about four stages. So you have the struggle, the release, the flow, and the recovery, right? So if you think about it, if you can take those four stages, regardless of the time interval, and apply them in your life, in your yoga practice, they call it sort of like a flywheel. You get the momentum going on this thing and you can keep it going. So, what's an example, right? So say I go, so most of us work nine to fives. I start my day off at 7 a.m. And, you know, I do all these little things to balance my challenge and skills, you know, with the have clear goals from a manufacturing standpoint. I work in the aerospace manufacturing industry as a quality manager and a lot of feedback, right, from customers complaining about their parts, having defects, whatever. So, anyways, you find these flow states like you might do at work that you have done at work, you know, where time sort of passes you by, you become very engrossed in a project. But what I want to get at here is that to keep flow going, you have to remember two things. And I think this culture needs to really embrace this idea to keep this optimal state of consciousness going. It's the release and the recovery. Why? Because we're in a hustle culture. We want to go, go, go, right. So when you're struggling with something, right? Say that Warrior Three, let's go back to that, you know, posture in yoga. And it's like, oh, this pose really sucks, you know, I'm really tight or whatever, and it's hard to hold. When's the heck is the teacher going to say the next pose? Why are you in it for so long? Um, you're working again the that's the struggle, right? So what you do next, hopefully you come out of it, right? And you go back into it, right? So flow isn't saying that you're just gonna sign up and be good at it and you were born with it, right? You have to practice these things. You can't, you're not born into anything. So the struggle phase reminds us of the practice. The release phase allows, you know, whatever, I don't know what consciousness means yet, studying that on the side, but whatever you've done to the, you know, to your body and your mind, your body's kind of digesting it. Your mind's digesting it, right? When you come back into that activity, that warrior three, hopefully when you practice enough, you can find a flow state. But because of what's going on from the neuroscience uh perspective in the brain, you have to recover, as Stephen Collar reminds us. And there's different ways to recover. And what I love about yoga is yoga could be an act of recovery. So recovery doesn't mean just sleeping, you know, things like that. But going back to, sorry, I'm kind of dancing around here because you can see I love applying flow in yoga and the work. So back to the workplace, right? So I went through flow. I've released, you know, different activities, you know, I went back to them. I struggled with an email, blah, blah, blah, found a flow state. At lunchtime, I take a quick recovery of a nap, right? So you talked about how do you find, or you asked the question, how do you find flow or how many times can you find flow in the day? To me, it's almost, again, there's four stages. So you can only find it, relatively speaking, a quarter of that relative time. So it's not the whole day, you know, and plus you get you're sleeping at night because your brain and you know, mind and body have to all uh rest as well. But think about just to summarize all that, if you want to implement flow more, struggle, release, flow, and recovery. You need all four. You can't just go into a yoga class blasting music from the gate and expecting to find a flow state the entire time. Even in the yoga class, you need moments to transition, right? To go from to reduce the stimuli to get them back down, to get them back into the flow channel, and then even moments of rest, right? Quick times in child's pose or in a standing pose. So you can design a yoga class, you can design your day, any work that you do with those four uh stages to flow.
SPEAKER_00Super interesting. I learned new things, though. And I've been listening to you talk about flow for a long time now. So one of the things that we've talked about is, and actually in our flow workshop that we taught, I did a you talked for, I think we did 30 minutes discussion, and then I taught a abbreviated one hour ashtanga primary series. So Ashtanga we talked about uh the previous episode follows a set sequence. And so what is the purpose of a yoga sequence comparing that to creative sequencing and also with flow states? I know you and I have talked a lot about for me, I guess I really like that set sequence, and I feel like it when I learned about flow from you, I was like, oh, Ashtanga like really sets you up for flow because there's clear goals, you know exactly what the sequence is, you have challenging poses, like we don't skip poses in Ashtanga, so you have to at least try the pose, do some sort of variation of it. But you gotta go through that struggle, you gotta go through that challenge. And so I guess can we just yeah, elaborate on what do you what are your thoughts on set sequencing versus creative sequencing and how that relates to flow?
SPEAKER_01I mean, I guess like, you know, it goes back to we're talking about again in the in the first episode, so definitely go back and listen to that. But, you know, yoga as once defined in the ancient texts, it was really 84 million postures, so meaning just to live life. So, regardless of what you're doing, you know, it's whether it's a set sequence, whether it's, you know, spontaneity, I think it's really like dependent on how you break down, you know, the antecedents of flow, right? The clear goals, the immediate feedback, the challenge skill ratio, like you just did with Ashtanga. But we can apply that to a hot vinyasa class blasting music and it's 100 degrees, right? Because think of it from this perspective, right? The challenge, you might think right away, oh, it's the heat and whatever else. I actually think it's what I'm gonna call active listening, right? Because you don't know what the sequence is, you don't know what's coming. You have to be so present and so mindful to listen to the teacher, to listen to what's going on in the room. And that's a different challenge. That's a different skill, right? Now, obviously, there's downsides to that because when you look at the goal of yoga, right, you're trying to calm the mind. And one thing I just want to say, I guess, with in terms of well, I'm gonna wait because that's the frequencies we'll talk about that with music. But yeah, back to just the the set sequence idea, I think it really just sort of depends, you know. I think it, you know, I have, you know, I've rock climbs, you know, a good portion of my life. I've run 12 marathons, I've played drums, you know, and I just like when I say all these things, I just think back to when I was running, I had sort of set distances that I wanted, right? Sort of a set sequence, if you will, throughout the week. But it would change sometimes, right? And I could could move with that. And sometimes to get faster at running, I'd have to shake up the sequence, right? And I understand with Ashtanga, there's that set sequence, but nobody can go into the pose, right? We have to still work the component parts. Now I understand, like, well, correct me if I'm wrong, right? You get to a certain posture, you kind of work it and then you work to the next one. Or was that sort of the older school of thought?
SPEAKER_00The old school was you were you'd be stopped. Like if you couldn't do if you couldn't bind Marichiasin I D, you would be stopped there. And that's kind of I'd be stopped before that. Hopefully uh kind of more on its way out now. Like I teach uh Marichiasana D just like a figure four stretch with a twist. I like that. And then yeah, and you know, maybe you do it a couple ways. So maybe you would do it like that, and then maybe you would work a bind um without being in in the lotus position, and then move on. So there's definitely ways, I feel, to work with the sequence where you can produce you can come up with if you're working with a teacher, they should be able to come up with another variation for you so that you can go through the sequence and you don't have to just be stopped.
SPEAKER_01I think again, I it's like we're not trying to say there's one right way or wrong, right? We're just I guess the the boundaries of which this podcast is kind of was built from is if we're treating the sutras of Patanjali, these texts, you know, even the Bhagavad Gita, we can throw that in there, on what yoga is. And if we're trying to calm the mind, to me, whether you have a set sequence or you don't, or you call it hot power or it's goat yoga or whatever the heck yoga it is, right? If you're trying to calm the mind, you're doing yoga, right? So I mean, look, regardless of these words, I think it comes back to the intentions of the teacher when they step into the classroom. What is it they're trying to do, right? Obviously, most teachers are trying to create an experience, right? You know, they want students to learn. And we're going to get to the enjoyment piece, the entertainment piece, because that's a very interesting one too, right? The whole yoga's of practice versus performance. And there is an element, right, of a teacher being in front of everyone. Again, public speaking, right? Very scary thing. Where there is sort of a performance aspect to that. So I brought some notes here. Can't read them from there, but I'm going to read them to you because I just wanted to make sure I got these kind of facts straight. So we talked about, you know, the different brain uh states, right? So you have the gamma, beta, alpha theta, and delta. And basically, you know, gamma is, you know, problem solving. You got a lot of chatter, right, to do that, right? As you can imagine, as you're trying to problem solve, the mind is thinking it's going to see a lot of high frequency. And then you move into alpha theta, which is a flow state, right? So you're in that zone. Like Emily said, you know, when you're driving, it feels like you know, minutes have gone by on a three-hour trip up north or wherever you are in the uh in the world, south or whatever, whichever direction. And then when you get to delta, right, it's the lowest. And that makes sort of sense, right? Because when you're sleeping, the brain's not doing much other than obviously keeping the rest of you alive while while you, you know, um not unconscious. I guess I don't even know what sleep is yet. But anyways, when you're sleeping, lower frequencies. But here's an interesting chart, right? So, and I'm gonna kind of just highlight. So a lot of music is played, or a lot of, excuse me, classes play music today. And what's interesting is, you know, this particular group here, of course, the reference chopped off. We'll put it in the show notes. Um, but they have a table here, and I find it very interesting where, you know, the genre of pop has a high frequency of 342 hertz. So that's how many times the sound waves are like coming at you, if you will. And so to put that kind of into perspective, alpha theta brain waves, okay, are anywhere from 4 hertz to 12 hertz, right? So remember, the goal is to calm the fluctuations of the mind. If you're playing, you know, Taylor Swift and, you know, whatever other pop songs, believe me, I like Taylor Swift too. I'm gonna admit, I'm not gonna lie. Some songs I don't mind, you know. Um, but it's 342 hertz. That's a high frequency, right? And then when you talk about calming the mind, you're down, flow states are supposed to be at four to 12 hertz. So again, the question of set sequence, I think it's all gonna depend on how you know you structure the classroom as a teacher to get the brain waves to calm down, right? So the goal is shavasana, you know, at the end of class to be able to sit still. I think that's the ultimate test, right? You'd probably agree, you know, in terms of like, can you actually calm the mind? But I think, you know, that whole thing of the moving meditation still holds where, you know, music, even though, yes, the frequency of music you could argue is 342 hertz, the highest for pop. African drumming was eight hertz, by the way. So you could do a whole class on African drumming and you'd be in a flow state, hopefully. So there's a phenomenon called entrainment in physics. And imagine you have the speakers, right, blasting at 342 hertz at you. And so there's a phenomenon where, you know, that oscillating at that frequency, that other object, you can actually pick up that vibration, right? You've probably felt it with other people. You know, it's like if they're energetic, you become energetic, right? But remember, in the context of a yoga class, right, in terms of the sutras of Batanjali, we want to calm the mind, right? So one argument to music is that, okay, maybe we're like beyond gamma waves right now, right? We're beyond everybody's thinking, everyone's got squirrel brain, if you will, myself included, sometimes looking at those, you know, Lego, Instagram, Doom Scrolls. And, you know, so we're way up here in chatter. So music gets us down to a lower state, right? And I think if we were to, if I were to sort of like make a hierarchy of yoga classes as they relate to the goal of yoga and how they do that effectively, it would start with like Pilates, right? Kind of where the higher frequency is. And again, this isn't an insult to anyone, right? This is just stating it from the perspective of frequencies and that phenomenon of entrainment. So getting a little technical here. So we've got Pilates and hot vinyasa classes with loud music, right? So whatever frequencies your playlists are at, just so if you're wondering, you know, hip hop is 157 hertz. You've got jazz. I don't know who plays jazz in a yoga class, but 103 blues, I've played that sometimes, is 79 hertz. Um, hip-hop, I already said that. Country is 122 hertz, right? So we're moving down and calming the waves, right? So Pilates, Hadvinyasa yoga classes. Then I would say probably classes without music, and then going to what we call a slow flow, not whatever that means, right? We've been to enough classes, slow flow is so relative, and what does that even mean? And then I think yin would definitely have to place high in terms of reaching that goal of yoga because you're in a posture for three to five minutes, you know, and most people can't even sit still for more than I think it's nine seconds, is our attention. It's eight seconds. I think the goldfish. Yeah, so we're worse than the goldfish right now in terms of attention span. So yin is getting closer. And I think, you know, the and again, this isn't to say that we're just painting a picture here. Most people, when they think like meditate, I gotta go to the, you know, the Himalayas and be with the monks and you know sit in the lotus posture and I do nothing, you know, and that's not really practical for a lot of people. But working our way towards the goal of yoga, that is kind of the direction, right? And remember, yoga was founded really from ascetics where they would literally go in the woods and like hang upside down in trees and hold their arm up for like hours, you know, and just basically an aesthetic, they just stood there and like did nothing. That was all that was. So yoga has roots of that, right? So, but they were doing that to calm the mind.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think our like I encourage listeners to just go out and try different styles. Try a set sequence for a while, whether that it isn't an Ashtanga set sequence, or it could be 26 and 2, or it could be a sequence that you come up with on your own. And then and try maybe a hot vinyasa or just like a vinyasa power yoga flow and see how do you feel with music, without music, with a set sequence, or without a set sequence. For me, I have found over my 10 plus years of practice that I like the set sequence. Like I mentioned, knowing the there's a clear goal for me. I know what the poses are. Uh sometimes I'll go into the my practice and say, okay, well, today I'm gonna focus on Pinchamayrasana. And that is gonna be my focus. I'm gonna spend a little bit extra time there, and so that's my goal. Or maybe it's I'm gonna really focus on my breath today, and then that's my goal. So for me, that set sequence just really helps set up the the goal, and then I'm able to get feedback, that immediate feedback, because I keep doing it over and over again. So if I've been practicing this sequence for a week or so, I might start to notice some differences. And so I'm getting that feedback there. And then you're building up skills over time. As you progress through the series, you might get more poses, which then increases your challenge. And so for me, the Ashtanga method works really well for me to get into that flow state and to get into that flow channel. But I know that's not for everyone. So again, just try, try different things. Maybe give Ashtanga a chance or try a different set sequence, or like I said, you could maybe come up with your own.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and just I'm curious, Emily, to hear your thoughts because again, a lot of classes play music. I used to play music, you know, of course, drummer and the know where kids, I would play our music, of course, right, trying to promote it. And, you know, there's times where I like music, and there's times where, of course, I don't like music, right? What happens, Emily, when you hear a song that you like? What do you what do you do? Or a song that you don't like, right? Imagine the students coming in and they hear songs that they like or don't like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I recently, I guess within the last year, have, because there's a lot of power yoga where we live. So I've started taking some of those uh just kind of on the side. And I so used to not practicing with m with music now, so that has been uh different for me. So what I've noticed is usually I can kind of tune it out because I don't know a lot of popular music. So if I don't know the song, I'll just kind of tune it out. If it's something that I really don't like, generally I just don't like rap and country, so I don't really hear. I mean sh whatever. I just don't like the fandom around. I don't either. I just like the music, yeah. So I will say mostly I I usually don't hear rap or country, and I think people know those are kind of polar polarizing types of music. But I probably would definitely get like angry. I guess there are some like, yeah, pop songs I don't like, and definitely negative feelings would arise when I hear a song I like though. So this happened to me the other day. I was practicing in a class and a Grace Potter song came on, and I was like, oh my God, I love this song. What song is it? And my brain is just trying to think, oh, what's the name of the song? What is this one? And I can't wait to leave class and go listen to Grace Potter. And she went to my college St. Lawrence, and I saw her play there, and it was so awesome. These are all the things that are going through my head. And then I realized, crap, what did the teacher say? I have no idea what's being cued. So it really took me out of the present. It took me out of the class, and it was a distraction for me. So I actually do worse with songs that I that I like.
SPEAKER_01So then how do we balance, Emily? This idea of sort of like enjoyment, excitement, you know, we find our flow, right? You can find flow in music, right? I can tell you countless times when I'm playing drums, I'm in a flow state, right? Trying to there's also a thing called group flow, too. Um, Keith Sawyer was a the you know, student of Mihai, chick sent me high, the the godfather of flow. And, you know, Keith, you know, researched a lot of group flow. And so I think yoga classes bring elements of that group flow too. But I guess like walk us through your thoughts on like just what does enjoyment mean today in a yoga class? Let's just start with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So for me, you should be, it should be something that you enjoy. It shouldn't feel like something that you have to check off that like you're dreading to do each day. I think too, going back to flow states, when you find a flow state in yoga, like that's enjoyable. And when you're able to like just really be present and in your body, that is enjoyable. I also think though, it is not just all sunshine and rainbows. It is not going and wanting to be entertained for the whole time and like having a blast and having fun. It should be challenging.
SPEAKER_01That's a music concert.
SPEAKER_00And actually, I forget whose research it is, but if you increase your challenge by 4%, you're more likely to get into a flow state. So we should be facing challenge. Things also come up on our yoga, Matt, right? There might be negative feelings. And like I mentioned in Ashtanga, we don't skip poses. So you're learning how to breathe through uncomfortable situations. Doing kapotasa, the super deep backbend, there's a lot of fear that comes up for people. And it's not, it's not fun for a lot of people. It's scary, it's uncomfortable, it might not feel great, but we still do it. We work on it, we breathe through it. And that teaches us off the mat when we're in these uncomfortable situations, whether that be like a difficult conversation you're having with someone, or I think I mentioned this on the last episode: hitting a tire while you're driving on the highway. Or the other day, oh my gosh, I hit a pigeon flew into my car while I was on the highway. It just went right into my windshield. And so our practice on our mat, having facing these difficult things, we're able to then face difficult things when we're not on our mat. So yes, you should be able to find enjoyment in your practice, but it shouldn't 100% be enjoyment feeling like we're, you know, at a, I don't know, a dance party or a concert or whatever some of these classes are. Yeah, right. Hanging out with goats.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cat yoga. So one thing that's cool about flow here, just to kind of wrap this episode up, is that a characteristic of flow is that it creates what's called an autotelic personality, meaning that Emily kind of was alluding to it, you have your intrinsically, you know, um, there's an intrinsic desire to do the thing that you're doing, right? You're doing it for the sake of doing it, right? You're not in it for the reward, right? So you have the difference between intrinsic desire and extrinsic sort of desires, right? Extrinsic is when I get that thing done and then I get an award for it, right? I get a paycheck, I get a, you know, attaboy or whatever, right? The intrinsic is when I just, I'm just so compelled that I want to do it. And that's just the beauty of flow is it's again, it's built in. Yoga classes have it. That's why I love yoga so much, right? That's such a such a crossover with flow in psychology, flow in neuroscience, flow in yoga, because again, the yogis got it right. They were intrinsically motivated to show up, right? So don't feel guilty, right? If you want to go to classes and listen to music and things like that. I don't think that's kind of the, that's not what we're saying. Again, we're just saying that if you want to follow the sutras of Batanjali to calm the fluctuations of the mind, which is the goal of yoga, just question is music doing it for you? Are fast-paced classes doing it for you? Maybe some weeks it is, right? Sometimes life really sucks, right? You get a pigeon flying in your car, right? Maybe you want to hear Grace Potter. You know, you can't sit with yourself for that day, and that's fine, right? We're thinking it in terms of the long term adventure.
SPEAKER_00All right. Does that wrap up this episode?
SPEAKER_01I think so.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much. We'll see everyone next time.
SPEAKER_00And remember, at your yoga practice, what you do on the mat, you do off the mat as well.
SPEAKER_01Love it.