What is yoga?

"What type of mats are those?" asked the young high school boy who was helping me load groceries into the back of my car yesterday AFTER I had scooted a pile of yoga mats over to make room for my bags.

"Yoga mats," I responded.

"What is yoga anyway?" he asked.

Ummm....this is where I went blank. After all the times I've explained to people what yoga is, I couldn't for the life of me come up with a quick 30 second explanation that I thought effectively explained to my young helper the wonderful practice that is yoga. I finally settled on:

"It's an exercise where you do various poses that help build strength and flexibility."

"So it's not just stretching?" he clarified.

"No, a little more than just stretching." I said.

"Oh. I always wondered what yoga was." he said as he started to push the cart back towards the store entrance, wishing me a good day.

It was a brief exchange of words, but at the same time has made me ponder should it happen again, what will I say. How do you verbalize the wisdom of thousands of years of such an amazing and rich practice in 30 seconds or less?

I'm curious, what would you say?


namaste