Early on in my yoga teaching life someone came up to me after class.

“I was wondering if you had any tips to help me get into lotus posture?”

Immediately, my mind began whirring with hips and rotation and images from workshops and teacher training and how I could smartly answer his question and give him all the asana tidbits he could want. And believe me, I wanted to sound knowledgeable, like the real deal. (In retrospect, I should have lauded him for his interest in padmasana over handstand. This was the innocent world before the instagrammification of yoga). But something familiar about him made me stop, look at his face, and ask:

“Why do you want to get into lotus posture?”

“Because then I’ll know I’ve made it,” he said.

“Ah,” I said, “just like when you finally finish school, do well on the GREs, get that apartment, get the right girl, land the right job, make the right amount of money, then you’ll be happy, then your real life can start, then you’ll know you’ve made it?”

“You’ve just described my life,” he said.

Actually, no. I was talking about mine.

Kelly Morris once said that once you get an asana, there’s just a whole other mountain of asana to climb. Ain’t that the truth.

Still, I’m not perfect or all that wise. I’ve stumbled into the “hanging it all” on one asana trap like a drunken fool–sloshed on the notion that one posture could bring it all. For a while, that was supta kurmasana, they key to my entry into the glorious magical land of second series. It was all I could see, care about, think about. For a while that was fun. For a while that fueled my practice.

Then I got it. I still remember the moment—I had crossed those feet behind my head! Did the teacher see? Did he see? Yes he did! That day I crossed my feet and bound my hands I also crossed the threshold into that previously forbidden intermediate series land. But there were no balloons, no cupcakes, no lollipops.

There were just more postures.

I had to find something else to inspire my daily practice. What did I find? The right teacher at the right time, who helped frame a way for viewing my entire practice, including prizing the simplest postures, sometimes even more so than the more “advanced” ones. In fact, the more I needed work later in my practice, the more he hounded on the pieces that came earlier.

Perhaps because of him, I’ve also found that once I “get” an asana, there’s just a whole lot more of that particular asana to “get.” In other words, I’m still trying to “do” a boatload of asanas that I can already, on some level, “do.”

So when will I know I’ve made it? Probably when I stop caring so much about whether or not I’ve made it.

Sure, these days I have a “challenge” posture but I don’t care that much about it. Indeed, my most formidable challenges still lurk in every nook and cranny of surya namaskara A. I care enough to want my latest posture and to work -–hard– for it, but getting it doesn’t define my existence on the mat. I’m happy just with doing the practice — even as within that practice I’m aware that there are things that can and should change and improve and evolve. Really. It’s a wonderful place to be. It’s a place I hope to find beyond my asana practice in all of life practice. Maybe there’s a reason why it’s not: “get this posture and all is coming” but —

“Practice and all is coming.”

PS- If you would like some knowledgeable tidbits regarding lotus or padmasana, check these videos out from David Garrigues.