🏋️‍♀️🚫✅ “That’s Not Yoga!” (Or Is It?)

Apparently, the bigger your Instagram gets, the more people want to tell you what yoga is, or isn’t 🫠

“You can’t mix kettlebells with asanas.”

“Wait, that pose is not yoga.”

Every time, I just smile. Because deep down I know:

👉 The heart of yoga was never about the shape of the practice. It was about the intention.

But those comments got me thinking: if we’re still arguing about what yoga is or isn’t… maybe we’ve forgotten the bigger picture.

 🌱 Yoga Has Always Evolved

Here’s a quick history tour (spoiler: yoga has never been just one thing):

The Vedas → No asanas yet. Yoga meant living your dharma, fulfilling responsibilities in society.

The Upanishads → Practice looked like meditating, questioning, debating with teachers, chasing those “aha!” insights about the self.

The Bhagavad Gita → Three main paths: karma (selfless action) seen as the highest path, bhakti (devotion), and jñana (knowledge). Still no down dog 🐶.

Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras → Yoga = stilling the mind. Asana is just one of eight steps, and originally just meant a steady seat, not a sweaty vinyasa flow.

Tantra & Hatha → Yoga got embodied and ritual-rich, working with prana, chakras, and energy. Movement was a doorway, not the goal.

👉 And Sun Salutations A & B? They only date back about 100 years, to Krishnamacharya, who mixed Indian tradition with European gymnastics. (See Mark Singleton’s The Roots of Yoga if you’re into research rabbit holes 🐇📚).

So when someone says “that’s not yoga,” I always wonder: where in time do they draw the line? To the Vedas? The Upanishads? To Iyengar and Ashtanga? To Rocket?

Why stop there? Why not keep evolving, just like yoga always has?

Don’t get me wrong, commitment matters. At some point, we all need to stick with a path long enough for it to shape us. But why project that onto everyone else’s path? Just because one person finds freedom in their style, does it mean everybody else should too? Nope.

⚠️  When Yoga Gets Rigid

History shows that when yoga becomes rigid, it can get misused. Some extremist groups in India today, for example, use yoga as a symbol of cultural purity, a practice of unity twisted into one of division.

That’s why it baffles me when someone insists: this is yoga, that is not. Which brings us to the big question…

🌍 Who Owns Yoga?

Humans. That’s my short answer. 🫶

But let me expand:

Yes, yoga was born in India, and we honor that deeply 🙏. But modern yoga, as we know it, has been shaped by many influences. Indian philosophies, European physical culture, modern wellness… yoga has always adapted to humans of the time.

Even within India, yoga was never one single definition. Dualist traditions wanted freedom from the body. Non-dualist ones wanted union with the world through working with the body. That’s not just variety of definition, that’s contradiction.

So, today, yoga doesn’t belong to one culture, or one lineage, or one era.

Yoga belongs to those who practice it in one form or another. 💃🏻🤸🏋️‍♀️🧘‍♀️🚶‍♀️

 🔥 My Kettlebell Confession

So when I pick up a kettlebell and mix it with asana, here’s what happens:

• It teaches me core and midline like nothing else.

• It makes me feel condensed, powerful, less floaty.

• It fuels my fire, steadies my mind.

As I play with balancing the elements in practice and in life, this kind of training keeps my fire alive 🐦‍🔥.

Do I need to call it yoga? Not really.

But the way I practice it is fully aligned with my yoga: body exploration → self exploration → more freedom, more clarity.

Different seasons of life call for different practices. For me, kettlebells are just one of many ways to keep balance.

Think of it like this:

🪷 Water → Meditation, cultivating depth like the stillness of the ocean.

🔥 Fire → Strength, play, kettlebells, handstands, igniting energy.

🌬️ Air → Flow, breath, adaptability, dance.

🌍 Earth → Walking, grounding, stability in every step.

🌳 Wood → Study & philosophy, growing roots and branches of wisdom.

In Ayurveda and Chinese Medicine, balance means working with all the elements, not clinging to one. Why should yoga be any different?

💡 The Real Line

So where do we draw the line?

Not in the shape of the practice.

But in the intention behind it.

Yoga = intentional practice.

Yoga = presence.

Yoga = self-reflection in action.

When you practice like this (whatever the shape of the practice), you don’t just do yoga, you become a yogi. Not just on the mat, but off it too.

✨ Final Word

If yoga teaches unity, maybe our job is to stop fighting about what yoga “is” or “isn’t”… and start noticing how we show up, with awareness, in everything we do.

So tell me: what’s the most unexpected way you practice yoga? 

Hit comment, I’d love to hear your story.

Love & Play, 

Fanny