Many of you have probably heard “fake it till you make it.” My guru took that literally.
When he felt the energy in the room wasn’t quite right, too heavy, too tense, or too much thinking, he would stop everything. Tell us to stand up. Raise our hands. Shake them out, get rid of whatever we were holding. And then just laugh.
Not because anything was funny. Just like that. Start somewhere.
The first time, I looked around the room. Twenty people standing in Rishikesh, arms up, making the most unconvincing sounds I have ever heard. I felt completely ridiculous. I tried to join in, but nothing came out right. Too self-conscious. Too aware of how strange this was.
However, he kept going. Relentless. Joyful. Absolutely serious about not being serious.
And then someone cracked. Then someone else. Within two minutes, the whole room was actually laughing, REALLY laughing. Not because anything had changed, but because the body doesn’t always know the difference between fake joy and real joy. It finds its way there anyway.
I did that meditation already three times.
Every time it started the same: awkward, forced, a little embarrassing. And every time it ended the same: completely real.
Nobody put that in the yoga brochure.
The lie we believe before we start
Before we get to the laughing, let’s talk about the thing that keeps most people off the mat entirely.
“I can’t do yoga. I’m not flexible.”
I hear this constantly. And every time I do, I think about the fact that you couldn’t walk when you were born either. Nobody waits until they can walk perfectly before they take their first step. You fell. You got back up. You tried a slightly different way. Slowly, with completely new movements, you figured it out.
Not being flexible is not a reason to wait. It is exactly the reason to start.
Flexibility is a result of yoga practice, not a requirement for it. Very tight bodies often have the most to gain. Tight hips, a stiff lower back, or locked shoulders. These are not disqualifications. They are invitations.
But honestly? Flexibility is not even the point.
What yoga actually is
Yoga is more than movement. It is the stillness within the flow. It is the path of awareness. It is the union with nature. It is the realisation of Self.
In surfing, it is the breath you find underwater when panic wants to take over. It is the focus that tells your board where to go. It is the gratitude you feel paddling back to shore. It is the patience of sitting in the lineup when the waves are not coming, and you have nothing to do but be present. It is the humility of being reminded, again, that it is not you who is in charge.
Yoga is a way of being.
And it turns out, so is surfing.
→ Read: Why Every Surfer Should Try Yoga (And Vice Versa)
The guru who made it real
Back to Rishikesh. Back to that guru.
He was not the kind of teacher who stood at the front of the room looking enlightened. He was the kind who would catch your eye mid-pose and grin, like the two of you were sharing a joke nobody else had heard yet. He laughed at himself. He laughed with us. He understood something that took me longer to understand: joy is not the opposite of depth. It is a doorway into it.
The laughing meditation was not a warm-up. It was the practice. The moment the fake laughter cracked into something real, something in the room shifted. The tension dropped. People became present, because they had stopped performing seriousness and let something honest through instead.
The Indian broom
During a break between sessions, I picked up an Indian broom (a bundle of thin sticks, very short, nothing like anything I had used before), and tried to sweep the room.
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. My Indian friends watched me for about thirty seconds before completely losing it. I kept going, doing it more dramatically, making it worse on purpose. We were crying laughing.
It was during a month that was also one of the most intense, disciplined, and genuinely transformative experiences of my life.
Both things were true at the same time. The depth and the absurdity. That is what nobody puts in the yoga brochure.
Savasana snorers, blind dinners, and kirtan chaos
A few more images from that month, because I think they matter.
Savasana is the final resting pose. You lie flat on your back, completely still, and let everything settle. It is meant to be the most important pose of the session. One of my classmates fell asleep in it. Regularly. Sometimes loudly. The teacher never woke them. Some lessons arrive in rest. Over time, everybody knew the rumour about him, and he got a nickname accordingly.
One evening, we had a blind dinner. The idea was mindfulness. Eat without sight, slow down, and pay attention. What made it more interesting was that none of us knew Indian food well enough to identify anything by smell or texture. We had no idea what we were eating. It became one of the funniest evenings of the whole month. At one point, I could not even tell if anyone was still sitting next to me. I confidently reached across the table to find out, sending my friend’s food flying out of her hand just as she was about to eat it. She sat there confused. I sat there confused. Then someone started laughing, and nobody could stop.
And then there was kirtan. This experience in India looks nothing like the calm, seated version you may have seen in Western studios. People dance. They jump. They spin. They make noise. It is joyful and loud and completely alive, AND one of the oldest spiritual practices there is.
Yoga has always had room for joy. We just edited that part out somewhere along the way.
Stone painting as meditation
Not everything that is yoga looks like yoga.
On one of my retreats, we collected stones from the ground and painted them together. Side by side, without agenda. No right way to do it. No outcome to achieve. Just hands busy and minds settling. Having fun all together.
In yoga philosophy, this is called dharana = single-pointed focus. The ego has nothing to defend. The thinking mind finally gets a rest. It counts. It all counts.
The mat does not care if you are graceful
Yoga will ask you to breathe. To pay attention. To show up without knowing exactly what will happen.
Sometimes it will ask you to hold a difficult pose. Sometimes it will ask you to fake-laugh in a room full of strangers until the laughter becomes real. Sometimes it will hand you an Indian broom and let your friends laugh at you until you are laughing too.
The serious and the silly. The stillness and the chaos. The philosophy lecture and the blind dinner.
All of it is the practice.
Watch my funny moments in this video.
If you have been waiting until you are flexible enough, calm enough, or serious enough, you have misunderstood what you are waiting for. The mat does not care if you are graceful. It just wants you to show up.
Curious what it looks like to actually live yoga, surf, travel, and all the unplanned moments in between?
That is what Waves & Within is built around.
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