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After Years of Practice: Five Things Yoga Didn't Remove (And Why I'm Grateful It Didn't)
I can honestly say that yoga has transformed my life. Just not in the way I expected.
Reading time: 3 minutes
When I first stepped onto a yoga mat in my twenties, I don't think I could have imagined where the practice would eventually lead. Like many people, I quietly hoped yoga would make me calmer. Wiser. Kinder. More patient.
I thought that if I practiced long enough, perhaps the parts of me that felt uncomfortable would slowly disappear.
More than twenty-five years later, I can honestly say that yoga has transformed my life.
Just not in the way I expected.
It didn't remove my humanity.
It changed my relationship with it.
Here are five things that years of practice haven't taken away—and why I'm grateful they haven't.
1. Disappointment
I still experience disappointment.
Plans fall through.
People misunderstand me.
Life doesn't always unfold in the way I hoped it would.
Years ago, disappointment could stay with me for days.
Sometimes much longer.
Now it still arrives.
But it doesn't take up permanent residence.
The practice hasn't eliminated disappointment.
It has helped me notice when I'm resisting reality and gently return to what is actually here.
That return is where peace begins.
2. Comparison
Comparison still visits from time to time.
Someone publishes a beautiful book.
Someone teaches a remarkable class.
Someone creates something that moves me.
For a brief moment, I can feel my mind tighten.
But awareness has taught me to stay curious instead of believing the first story that appears.
More often than not, what initially feels like comparison reveals itself to be inspiration.
I don't actually want to become that person.
Something in their work has reminded me of a part of myself that is still waiting to be expressed.
Yoga hasn't stopped me from comparing.
It has taught me how to listen more deeply to what comparison is trying to tell me.
3. Grief
Practice doesn't protect us from loss.
Parents age.
Children grow.
Relationships change.
People we love die.
Our own bodies change.
Grief continues to be part of my life.
The difference is that yoga has slowly taught me not to rush grief away.
Breath by breath, it has shown me that sorrow and love are often two sides of the same experience.
The more deeply we love, the more deeply we grieve.
I no longer see that as something to fix.
I see it as evidence that I have loved well.
4. Uncertainty
I used to believe certainty would finally bring peace.
Now I suspect the opposite is true.
Much of life remains beautifully uncertain.
Teaching has taught me that.
Parenting has taught me that.
Growing older has certainly taught me that.
Yoga has not handed me all the answers.
Instead, it has helped me become a little more comfortable living with the questions.
There is a quiet freedom in no longer needing to know everything before taking the next breath.
5. Being Human
Perhaps this is the greatest surprise of all.
After decades of practice, I still get frustrated.
I still have moments of impatience.
I still make mistakes.
I still apologise.
I still begin again.
The difference is not that these moments have disappeared.
The difference is that I recognise them sooner.
Awareness has not removed my humanity.
It has simply slowed my reaction long enough for a deeper truth to emerge.
For many years, I thought yoga was helping me become a better person.
Now I think it has been helping me become a more present one.
More available to the conversation I'm having.
More available to the people I love.
More available to the dishes waiting in the sink.
More available to the breath arriving all by itself.
Perhaps this is one of the quiet gifts of a lifelong practice.
Not that we stop being human.
But that we stop fighting so hard against our humanity.
And somewhere in that softening, we discover that what we were searching for was never perfection.
It was presence.
Because presence, I've found, has a remarkable way of making an ordinary life feel completely enough.
Mellara Gold
Mellara Gold is an embodied practice teacher and writer rooted in yoga, mindfulness, and contemplative traditions.
