Yoga, an Inner Decolonization

Or how dropping everything you think yoga is supposed to be might be the most radical practice of your life.

Let me tell you something nobody put on a pastel Instagram graphic: yoga does not require you to be flexible. It does not require you to be vegetarian, sober, serene, or spiritually unbothered. It does not require you to light incense, own a mala, whisper Sanskrit in a linen outfit, or perform a particular brand of peace.

Yoga requires exactly one thing of you: that you show up. Fully. As you are. Right now.

That’s it. Yoga atha anushasanam. Yoga is now. Not the improved version of you. Not the quieter, leaner, more enlightened you. Now.

The Myth We Inherited

Somewhere between the ancient texts of South Asia and the wellness industry of the twenty-first century, yoga got repackaged. It became a product. A lifestyle. An aesthetic. And with that repackaging came a very specific image of who yoga is for — and who it isn’t.

The image is thin. Able-bodied. Flexible. Serene. Often white. Often female in a particular way. Certainly not someone who curses when they stub their toe, eats a burger on Friday night, prays facing Mecca, or rolls their eyes at crystal healing. Not someone with a complicated relationship with their body, their history, their ancestry.

This image is not ancient wisdom. This image is colonization — and it has done enormous harm.

It has made people feel that yoga belongs to someone else. That they are somehow not enough, not ready, not the right kind of human to walk through the door. It has stripped a profound liberation practice down to a fitness trend with Sanskrit window dressing, and in doing so, it has turned away the very people who might need it most.

I’ve had enough of it. And I suspect you have too.

What Decolonizing Actually Means (For You, On Your Mat)

Decolonization is not a buzzword. In the context of yoga, it’s an invitation — urgent and personal — to examine everything you’ve been told this practice is supposed to be, and to ask yourself: By whom? For whom? And does that serve my liberation?

It starts inside. Before the politics, before the curriculum, before the conversations about cultural appropriation (important as all of that is) — it starts with what you’ve internalized. The voice that says you’re too stiff. Too heavy. Too much. Not spiritual enough. Not consistent enough. Not the right religion.

That voice is not the voice of yoga. That voice is the voice of a system designed to make you feel you need to earn your way in.

You don’t.

You Are Already Welcome Here

Are you Muslim, Jewish, Mormon, Catholic, agnostic, confused about all of it? You are welcome here. Yoga is not a competing religion. It is a technology of consciousness — a set of practices that help you become more awake, more present, more yourself. Whatever name you call the divine, or whether you call it anything at all, the breath still moves. The nervous system still responds. The quality of your attention still transforms your life.

Do you eat meat? Do you swear? Do you have a complicated, messy, very human life? Good. So do I. So does every serious practitioner I’ve ever respected.

Can you not touch your toes? Perfect. Flexibility is a side effect of yoga, not a prerequisite. You are not auditioning. You are arriving.

What the Practice Actually Does

Here is what I’ve watched happen — in myself, in students over three decades of practice — when we stop performing yoga and start living it:

We become less reactive.

This is not small. This is everything. The pause between stimulus and response — that tiny, sacred gap — begins to widen. You stop firing off the email you’ll regret. You stop snapping at the person you love. You notice the moment before the habitual pattern kicks in, and in that noticing, you have a choice.

We develop discernment. Viveka — the capacity to see clearly, to distinguish the real from the constructed, the essential from the noise. You start to know what you actually value versus what you’ve been told to value. You start making decisions from that knowing rather than from fear or conditioning.

This is yoga working. Not because you held a beautiful posture. Because you showed up, again and again, and let the practice do what it has always been designed to do: return you to yourself.

Complete Devotion Doesn’t Mean Perfect Practice

Abhyasa — sustained, devoted practice — is one of the two foundational pillars of yoga alongside vairagya, non-attachment. But devotion is not perfectionism. It is not aesthetic compliance. It is not performing wellness for an audience.

Devotion means you keep coming back. Even when it’s awkward. Even when your mind won’t quiet. Even when life is chaotic and your mat collects dust for two weeks and you start again. Devotion is loyalty to the path, not loyalty to a particular image of yourself on the path.

The ancient texts weren’t written for people who had it all figured out. They were written for sadhakas — seekers. Imperfect, searching, genuine human beings who sensed that something more was possible and were willing to look.

That’s you. That’s always been you.

An Invitation

At Manas Yoga, we mean it when we say this practice is for everyone. Not as a marketing line. As a commitment. As a political stance and a spiritual one, because for us they are the same thing.

We will keep holding space that doesn’t ask you to leave parts of yourself at the door. We will keep questioning the versions of yoga that divide, exclude, and diminish. And we will keep returning, together, to the heart of what this practice actually is: a path toward greater presence, greater freedom, and — yes — greater service to the world around us.

Come as you are. Curse if you need to. Eat what you eat. Pray how you pray.

Just show up. Yoga will do the rest.

Erika Smith Iluszko is the founder and lead facilitator of Manas Yoga Vienna. She has practiced and taught for over three decades at the intersection of Advaita Vedanta, somatic inquiry, Traditional Chinese Medicine, fascia research and social justice.