You might not think that the shapes we make with our bodies in a yoga class have much to teach us about life. After all, Warrior 1 is a lunge with your arms in the air, Warrior 2 is a lunge with your arms out to the side. We learn where to put our feet, where to point our hips, how deeply to bend the front knee and then we move on.
But these postures give us an opportunity to explore qualities that we can take with us beyond the mat — strength, steadiness, courage, focus, softness and even surrender.
This week in class, we spent a couple of minutes slowing down and exploring Warrior 1 and Warrior 2. They are such familiar postures that it is easy to assume they are basically the same thing, but the subtle differences between them can actually give us some interesting things to think about.
Warrior 1: Stand your ground
Warrior 1 feels like a posture of grounding and intention. The feet root down, the legs work, the body rises upwards and the arms reach towards the sky. There is a sense of arriving somewhere and being prepared to meet what is in front of you.
In life, there are times when we need to stand our ground too and have the courage to stay with something even when it isn’t particularly comfortable. Think about something as ordinary as an argument with your partner – standing your ground doesn’t necessarily mean digging your heels in and refusing to move. It might mean being clear about what you believe while still being willing to listen. You can be strong in your position without becoming hard in your response.
In Warrior 1, the legs can be working incredibly hard, but that doesn’t mean the shoulders need to be tense, the jaw clenched or the breath restricted. We can have a strong foundation while allowing other parts of the body to soften.
Warrior 2: Find your focus
Warrior 2 has a different quality -the body opens out to the side, the arms stretch in opposite directions and the gaze moves towards the fingertips. There is strength here, but there is also focus – we’re choosing a direction and giving our attention to it.
That feels particularly relevant when life throws something difficult at us. Perhaps you’re dealing with something that seems to go on and on — a problem at work, a difficult relationship, a dispute with an organisation where you feel like you’re just one small person trying to make yourself heard. It can be exhausting and sometimes the temptation is to fight harder and harder simply because we feel we have to win.
But Warrior 2 offers another possibility; stay focused on what matters and don’t waste energy on everything around you. Root down through your feet, direct your energy out through your arms and hands, keep the breath level and intentional.
You might still have to make the phone calls, send the emails and keep pushing for the outcome you believe is fair but you don’t necessarily need to carry the tension of the entire battle in your body while you do it. There is a difference between persistence and struggle.
Peaceful Warrior: It’s OK to soften
I love the contradiction in the name of this posture – a warrior who is peaceful. The shape itself is a lovely reminder that strength doesn’t have to look aggressive – we can be powerful and open at the same time.
When we move from Warrior 2 into Peaceful Warrior, the gaze lifts, the upper body opens and there is a sense of expansion. We haven’t abandoned the strong foundation underneath us (you’ll often hear me cue “keep the legs strong and even into the ground”) but something softens as we transition, as if we’re saying ‘you don’t have to fight everything’ – sometimes the strongest thing we can do is soften.
Going back to that argument with your partner, perhaps Peaceful Warrior is the moment when you realise that proving yourself right isn’t actually the most important thing (I’m not going to lie, I struggle with this LOL). You can still know what you think and communicate a boundary but perhaps you can lower your voice, relax your shoulders and listen for a moment. It’s easy to think that this softening is a weakness but often it is a show of strength to allow an argument to head towards resolution.
Humble Warrior: Know when to bow
Humble Warrior takes this idea one step further. After all that standing tall, focusing and reaching, we fold forward and bring our attention back towards the earth. Because sometimes we need to stand up for ourselves and fight for what matters but sometimes we also need to recognise that we don’t know everything.
Humble Warrior can represent surrender, humility and the willingness to let go of the need to control everything. It doesn’t mean giving up, it means recognising that strength isn’t always about holding ourselves upright and pushing forwards. Sometimes it looks like saying, I might have got this wrong or I can’t control what happens next.
And sometimes it simply means putting down the struggle for a moment and taking a breath.
The Warrior isn’t about winning
The story behind Virabhadrasana comes from the Hindu mythology of Virabhadra, a fierce warrior created by Shiva. The modern Warrior postures are named after him, although the physical forms we recognise today belong to the much more recent development of modern postural yoga rather than being ancient poses from early yoga traditions.
But we can take the idea of the warrior somewhere beyond the literal story as our battles are rarely fought with swords! They might be an uncomfortable conversation we need to have, a boundary we need to set, a situation at work, a relationship that is testing us or simply the difficult things that life inevitably puts in front of us.
The Warrior poses give us four different ways of meeting those moments and if you revisit the headings above, none of them tells us that we should simply give up when life becomes difficult. Instead, they invite us to consider how we meet difficulty.
So maybe the real Warrior isn’t the person who wins the battle, but rather the person who can meet the battle with strength, steadiness, courage — and still remain soft.
See you soon in the cabin!
Michelle x
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