People often come to yoga to relieve pain, but they can be very surprised when yoga is itself painful. A real yoga practice looks nothing like depicted in ads – it isn’t always filled with moments of serene quiet and calm, soft light flowing in, peaceful facial expressions. The real yoga is challenging. It can make you feel like you have to go outside yourself to find strength or cope with a new kind of opening. Effort can manifest in determined and tense facial expressions. It can make you grunt or even cry out sometimes. And why shouldn’t it be painful? I mean, there are certain kinds of pain that are absolutely to be avoided: knee pain, low back pain, certain kinds of shoulder pain, headaches. But lots of kinds of pain are required for change and transformation. In the classes I teach, when people complain that something hurts, I make sure it isn’t an injurious situation. But I’ve heard the Iyengars say, basically: Well what do you expect? That it sho...