Yoga Isn't the Shape You Make: Why Practice Matters for LGBTQ+ People

When most people picture yoga, they picture a body. Usually a bendy one, doing something improbable on a beach. I get why, but the postures were never the point. They're a doorway. What I teach goes deeper than the shape: learning to feel the truth of what's happening inside us, and seeing how we keep reacting to it.

That matters for everyone, but I think it matters in a particular way for LGBTQ+ people. Here's why.

I came into contact with yoga in 2009 as I was really struggling in a financially abusive relationship with a partner who wanted all the control. I didn't realise it at the time, but yoga helped me to regain some agency in my life through understanding my body and mind interaction better. I definitely didn't have a light bulb, flashing auras moment that Instagram and TikTok tell us we should have. It was more of a slow awakening through observation after practices.

Through yoga I understood what self-esteem is, what confidence is, what a loving relationship looks like, and what harm my mind can do to me and others if I don't learn how it works.

A lot of us learned to leave our bodies

Growing up queer, a lot of us learnt early to watch ourselves from the outside. How we walk, how we sit, what our hands do when we talk, whether our voice gives something away. We get very good at monitoring ourselves and not very good at just living.

Some of us were told by religious or spiritual communities that our desire was impure, or that our bodies were a problem to be managed. Some of us met a subtler version of the same message in yoga or meditation spaces. Not always said out loud, but there in who was in the room, who wasn't, and what got talked about. A focus on masculine and feminine, on being divine or low vibration because of being different, or a twisted interpretation of what "nature or god" commands.

That kind of vigilance doesn't stay in the head. It lives in the body. A jaw that won't unclench, breath stuck high in the chest, a nervous system that never really believes it's safe. After a while we stop noticing we're doing it and start calling it our personality.

What I mean by feeling

In the early teachings of the Buddha there's a word, vedanā. It gets translated as "feeling", but it doesn't mean emotion. It's the tone that comes with every experience: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. A sound, a memory, a glance across a room, a flutter in the belly. Each one comes with one of these tones before we've had a chance to think about it.

What happens next is where we suffer, and also where we can be free. Pleasant tips into wanting more. Unpleasant tips into pushing away. Neutral tips into drifting off somewhere else. This happens hundreds of times a day and we barely notice it. The Buddha described it as a chain: contact leads to feeling, feeling to craving, craving to clinging, and from clinging come all the stories about who we are and what we need to defend.

The good news is that the chain can be seen. When we feel vedanā clearly, as sensation that comes and goes, the next link doesn't have to follow. There's a gap, and in that gap we get to choose. You don't have to believe me on this. You can test it for yourself.

So what are the postures and the breathing for?

This is where asana (posture) and pranayama (breathwork) come in. They aren't a performance. They settle the body and steady the breath so the mind can calm down enough to notice the more subtle sensations, the ones that eventually grow into pleasant, unpleasant or noticeably neutral sensations that we then react to. An agitated mind only notices the big stuff: pain, panic, a rush of pleasure. A calmer mind starts to notice the tightening just before a reaction, the warmth that comes with ease, the flicker of aversion when a pose gets uncomfortable.

Holding a posture becomes a bit of a laboratory. Something feels unpleasant: do I fight it, run from it, or can I stay with it and feel it change? Something feels lovely: can I enjoy it without grabbing for more? You don't need to touch your toes for any of this.

And what we practise on the mat shows up off it. At work, in relationships, in that moment someone says something careless about who we are, and instead of the old reaction there's a breath and a bit of room. Because how we do anything is how we do everything. As we train the mind in this way, we start to be able to apply it in other situations. At first it's more challenging, or we don't feel the subtler sensations, but after some time it becomes a working part of us. Meaning we're not reacting and creating more problems for ourselves later, or sabotaging something important.

Sex, sexuality and gender are not the problem

I want to be clear about this, because spiritual language has been used to hurt a lot of people in our community.

When yoga and the Buddha's teaching talk about purifying the mind, they're not talking about purifying you of your sexuality, your gender or your desire. Sauca, cleanliness, is one of the niyamas, and like the purification the Buddha taught, it points at the negativities that live in the mind: greed, ill will and delusion, and everything that comes from them, like shame, envy, cruelty, self-hatred and the need to grasp. These are what disturb our peace. Being gay, lesbian, bi, trans, non-binary or anything else isn't on that list.

The act isn't the problem. In the early teachings, the guidance on sexual conduct is about not causing harm: not breaking trust, and not taking advantage of people who aren't free to choose. Brahmacharya often gets narrowed down to "celibacy", but for those of us living ordinary lives it can be understood as the wise use of our energy, not wasting it on compulsion and not using people. It's about how we conduct ourselves and how we relate to desire in our minds. That applies to everyone, whoever they love and however they live in their bodies.

I have spoken to others and experienced it myself, so accept it to be true, that our community, because of society's waves of hatred and oppression over many decades and centuries, has got a rather peculiar culture. On the one hand, it values expression, creativity, music and the joy of living. On the other, judgement, substance abuse, a focus on aesthetics and high amounts of competition. If this were one person, we would perhaps feel sorry for them, say they were a mad fellow, so confused. And so many of us feel very confused, as our outward community reflects our internal reality. Yoga has met us before, and communities like us before, and offers us the technology of humanity to liberate ourselves and others. Focus on your conduct, reduce harm to yourself and others, help others to find real peace and harmony, and train your mind.

So the practice asks a different question. When desire comes up, can I feel it for what it is, a pleasant sensation, and notice whether it's tipping into compulsion or coming with care, honesty and respect? Am I being kind to this person, and to myself? That question is the same for a straight married couple as it is for two men who've just met, and it's a lot more freeing than asking "is this allowed?"

For trans and non-binary people, I'd say something similar about the body. Practice isn't about making peace with a body someone else has defined for you. It's about feeling your own experience from the inside, honestly, and letting that be the authority. While recognising that there are affirming changes one might make to bring oneself into alignment, what is it like to not hate the process, to have love and compassion for this body and mind while it changes?

This is what purification actually does. As those negativities loosen, we stop spending so much energy defending ourselves. We get to live more freely, and when we live freely it's easier for the people around us to do the same.

Freedom that spreads

The Buddha talked about four qualities he called the best abodes: loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity. We can't force them. They grow when the conditions are right, when the nervous system has settled, when shame has loosened its grip and we're not spending everything on protecting ourselves.

This is why I think the practice matters so much for our community. Freedom isn't just a personal thing. When someone is at ease in themselves, it's easier for the people around them to be at ease too. We become the person who can sit with a frightened younger queer person without needing to fix them, who can stay with a friend through a hard diagnosis, who can disagree without contempt and be glad for someone else's happiness without comparing.

We start to build the community we all need. We build it consciously, through changing ourselves, and start to bring about these four qualities.

Practising together

My classes here in Manchester are open to everyone, and LGBTQ+ people are very welcome. Nobody has to perform a posture, have a certain kind of body or explain themselves. We move, we breathe, we sit and we pay attention to what's going on inside. Pricing is on a sliding scale, so money doesn't have to be what keeps you out.

• Yoga classes, including meditation and breathwork — the place to start if you want to feel this for yourself.

• 1:1 mentoring and coaching — for when you want to go deeper: working with what practice stirs up, or bringing this way of seeing into your relationships, identity or work. I'm a coach, not a therapist, and if what comes up needs therapeutic support I'll help you find it.

• Working with organisations — if you lead an LGBTQ+ organisation, a charity or a team and want this way of working in how people lead and look after each other, start here.

The Buddha was clear that we shouldn't take teachings on trust. We must give them a sincere try and test them against our own experience. So don't take my word for any of this. Come and give it a go.

In Kindness, Ed.