Getting Your Practice Off the Mat
Turn calm you only feel in yoga or the dojo into a skill you carry into daily life
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 72%
Walsh argues that most people get a holiday from their life inside a practice like yoga, then walk out and start a flame war, having transferred no skill. His method deliberately bridges the container of practice into ordinary life. First, bring awareness to the ten minutes before and after class to see whether the calm survives contact with a receptionist or a phone. Second, use phone reminders to trigger single full practice breaths through the day. Third, shrink a well-known pose into a micro-version usable while walking, standing and talking, then load it with real-life stressors such as reading email so the state has to hold under pressure. Finally, interrogate whether your practice is genuinely developing you or just reinforcing your existing neurosis, in which case a second, contrasting practice may be needed.
Origin
Extracted from Mark Walsh's work as an embodiment teacher and his Embodied Yoga Principles method, developed to fix the common failure of practitioners who stay calm on the mat but not in life.
Core principles
- 01A calm you only feel inside class is a holiday, not a skill
- 02Skills transfer only when you deliberately practise them under real-life load
- 03Small, disguised versions of a pose or breath are more usable than the full form
- 04Bookend awareness around practice reveals whether it is actually changing you
How to run it
- 1
Bookend awareness around class
Deliberately notice what you do in the ten minutes before and after your practice. Catching yourself being rude to the front-desk person right before a calm class exposes how little is transferring.
Pro tip Treat the transition moments, not the practice itself, as the real test of change.
- 2
Set breath reminders through the day
Use your phone to prompt you five times a day to take one full practice breath. This threads the practice through ordinary time rather than fencing it into one session.
- 3
Shrink poses into micro-versions
Take a pose you know well, such as warrior, and find a small, non-weird way to embody it while walking, standing and talking, for example asking for a cup of tea in warrior pose versus its opposite.
Pro tip The goal is a usable posture in conversation, not a visible stretch that looks strange in public.
- 4
Add real-life load
Practise the transferred skill under increasing stress. Do belly breathing while holding your phone, then while reading your email, checking that the breath survives the trigger.
Pro tip Escalate difficulty gradually so the skill holds under progressively realistic pressure.
- 5
Audit and diversify your practice
Ask whether your practice is actually getting off the mat, and whether it is chosen from your neurosis and just making you more of how you already are. If so, add a contrasting second practice.
Pro tip A disciplined type may need a loose, expressive practice; a loose type may need a structured one.
In the wild
Walsh describes people who get very good at being calm in yoga, then walk out, pick up their phone, go on Facebook and immediately start a flame war. They had a holiday from their life but transferred no skill. His fix is to train belly breathing first with the phone in hand, then with email open, so the calm holds under the exact trigger that usually breaks it.
→ The breathing becomes a transferable skill that survives the phone rather than a state confined to the mat.
Walsh says it takes him five to ten minutes to train a yogi to take a pose they know well, like warrior, into walking, standing and talking. He has them ask for a cup of tea in warrior pose, then in its opposite, converting a floor stretch into a usable conversational posture.
→ A familiar pose becomes a practice the student can use on the street and in conversation.
Common mistakes
Treating class as a holiday from life
Feeling calm only inside the session and reverting the moment you leave means you gained a break, not a skill.
Practising only your comfort zone
Choosing a practice from your neurosis reinforces how you already are; a disciplined person getting more rigid needs a loosening practice instead.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone with an existing calming or movement practice who still loses composure in daily life.
Not ideal for
Complete beginners who have no practice to transfer yet.
From the transcript
“they haven't really transferred any skills across from yoga um into their life which is kind of a pity”
“notice what you do 10 minutes before and 10 minutes after class so bring in a bit of an awareness”
“is your yoga or your cry or whatever getting off the mat”
From the episode
How To Get Out Of Your Own Head - Mark Walsh - #230
Mark Walsh