VARIATIONS

From the Yoga Mat to Darwin: Tracing Variations Through Life

Something I realised yesterday while I was practising yoga: we are always making up variations within the asanas themselves.

We often hear, “You can also take a variation of this pose to accommodate yourself.”

Variations are not imperfect poses; they are simply variations. There is an openness and grace in that.

Some time ago, when I had a sprain in my ankle, I tried variations of almost all the poses.

Even now, depending on the state my body and mind are in, I explore different variations of the poses.

A variation, really, is all about “finding what feels good,” as my favourite yoga guide on the internet, Adriene Mishler, Yoga with Adriene would say.

This got me thinking about how naturally we flow into these variations on the mat, and how rarely we do the same in life.

And if we really look at what a variation means, it is not a drastic change, only a slight shift. A different angle, a different depth, a different support, while the intention remains the same.

In life, too, there always seems to be an ideal version that we are all aiming for.

An ideal routine, an ideal pace, an ideal body, an ideal timeline. But it is never the same.

We are all living the same life, only in different variations of it.

Variation is not just a yoga principle. It is one of nature’s oldest principles, too.

Biological science itself studies life through these differences, through variations.

For evolution by natural selection to occur, individuals of a species must be variable.

Slight differences in size, colour, behaviour, physiology, all of it matters.

Variation allows some individuals within a population to adapt to changing environments and survive where others may not.

Charles Darwin writes, “Although man does not cause variability and cannot even prevent it, he can select, preserve, and assimilate the variations given to him by the hand of nature in any way which he chooses.”

Nature itself survives through variation. It progresses through small accommodations, not rigid sameness.

So why do we spend so much of life trying to erase our own variations? Why are we taught so early to aim at being everything except ourselves?

Variations are neither about getting better nor getting worse. They are built into the very nature of life, though we rarely learn to see them that way.

Sticking to and striving for the right pose is good, but finding alignment and creating harmony within variations may be the real practice.

Perhaps that is how nature intended growth all along. Not through imitation, but through variation.

Not by becoming identical, but by becoming aligned.

That is evolution in its most personal form.