Practice Beyond the Pose: Nervous System Healing, Inner Dialogue & the Real Work of Yoga with Vahid Coskun

Vahid Coskun on getting to know yourself on the mat, planning for your worst moments and breathing out a little longer

TL;DR

• The one universal reason to do yoga, for Vahid, is self-study: getting to know yourself.
• There's a default you who runs most of your life on autopilot. Make the big decisions when you're at your best so that version of you has a guide.
• What other people think of you says more about them than about you.
• If he could get everyone to do one thing, it would be to make their exhale a couple of seconds longer.

Introduction

When clients ask me why they should do yoga, my answer is usually, "Just do it. It feels good." I practise yoga and I know it helps, but I've never had a great answer. So that's where I started with Vahid Coskun.

Vahid is a mindfulness therapist and lifestyle coach who teaches Bikram-style hot yoga, a demanding and highly structured practice. Because the sequence and timing don't change, he started noticing small moments where he could offer students a different way of relating to what was happening in their body and mind. He took notes, and those notes became his book.

We went deep in this one: the default version of you, the many versions of you that other people carry around, why emotions linger, finding your why, a virtual reality headset that sent him into an existential crisis, and the simplest breathing tip I've heard.

Lesson 1: Yoga is self-study

Insight: Vahid says there are countless reasons to show up to yoga. You might want a six-pack, looser hamstrings, a stronger core, better balance or to lose weight, or you might go because everyone else does. All of that is fine. But if he had to pick one universal reason, it would be self-study: getting to know yourself, whether through the pose, the breath or meditation.

He gave the example of holding a long squat while your legs start shaking. One person tells themselves they're suffering. Another tells themselves this is their nervous system building endurance, and that it means the work is paying off. The trembling is the same, but the experience isn't. The way you handle a posture, and even how you deal with the teacher and the lobby, mirrors how you handle the rest of your life.

Action: Next time a workout or pose gets hard, notice the story you're telling yourself. Try reframing it as your body adapting.

Outcome: You start to see how much of the struggle comes from your thinking, not the effort itself.

Lesson 2: Meet the default you

Insight: Vahid talks about the Jack who exists when I'm not thinking about myself. That's the default Jack, and he lives about 90% of my life. We all run on habits so we don't have to think about everything, which is useful. But it also means the version of you who goes to training is not always the same version who eats ice cream at 2 am.

That connects with something I always say: the workout is the 10%. The other 90% is what you're doing outside it.

Vahid's answer is not to expect 100% from yourself all the time. You have limits. You'll have stressed-out, not-so-smart moments. So when you're at your best, make the important decisions in advance, so the stressed version of you has a guide to follow. He recalled Jeff Bezos saying he only made a handful of key decisions a day as CEO, while Vahid was making around 250 a day running his own business. The more you decide ahead of time, the easier life becomes in the moment.

Action: Pick one recurring situation where you tend to make poor choices, such as late-night snacking or skipping a session when you're tired. Decide now what you'll do next time.

Outcome: Your best self makes the call before your stressed self has to.

Lesson 3: Other people's opinions reveal them

Insight: I'd heard Vahid say that if there are 30 people in a class, there are 31 versions of him. He explained it with me. In a meeting with 10 people, there are 11 Jacks: one for each person's view of me, plus the Jack I know. Many of his clients are run by the part of themselves that tries to manage how other people see them.

His view is that how you know yourself is what matters, because that's how you make decisions and relate to your own feelings. And when someone forms an opinion about you, it's telling you something about them. The same goes for people who spend their energy complaining about a colleague or an in-law. With social media, there might be thousands of people in the room, which makes this even more important.

Action: Next time someone's comment about you stings, ask yourself what it might reveal about them, and what you actually know to be true about yourself.

Outcome: You stop handing control of your self-worth to other people.

Lesson 4: Learn how to think, not just what to think

Insight: Vahid grew up speaking Turkish and learnt English as a teenager. Studying a new language made him look closely at how ideas become thoughts, and thoughts become words. He says nobody teaches us how to think.

Thoughts are only semi-voluntary. You can't stop thinking, but you can choose how you think. He compares it to a puppy that wants to bite a shoe. You can't stop it from wanting to, but you can guide it.

He also explained why emotions linger. He says an emotion in the nervous system should settle in around 90 seconds. The problem is that we think about it, which triggers it again, and then memories get involved and it keeps going. That loop works the other way too. A positive emotion followed by a positive thought and action can build on itself.

Action: When a strong emotion hits, give it about 90 seconds without adding to it. Notice whether it settles.

Outcome: You break the loop that keeps a bad moment going for hours.

Lesson 5: Find your real why

Insight: One line from Vahid's book stuck with me: "One of the hardest things in life is to do something you aren't convinced you should be doing." When you know your why, he says, nothing gets in the way: no bad weather and no annoying passenger. Without it, even getting out of bed becomes hard.

In high school, Vahid was 6'4", the tallest and one of the most athletic guys in his school, so everyone told him he should play basketball. He didn't love it. What he loved was getting up in the morning and running around his boarding school, even though people asked what was wrong with him.

He believes many of our "shoulds" come from wanting to appeal to someone, like a parent or a partner. The classic one is "I should lose weight." His challenging point is that the life you're living now often reflects what you believe you deserve. Unless you change the belief behind the "should", you won't find a real why.

Action: Write down one "should" you've been carrying around. Ask whose voice it really is, and what you actually want instead.

Outcome: You can tell the goals you're chasing for approval from the goals that are truly yours.

Lesson 6: Accept that life is finite

Insight: Vahid spent his 20s trying to become enlightened. He spent time in caves and did intense fasts and retreats, but enlightenment didn't come. Eventually he accepted that he's a regular person living a normal life, and that this ordinary life holds amazing treasures.

Thinking about your own death, without being resentful or ignorant about it, is part of that. He says the true beauty of life emerges when you realise it's temporary. He also described putting on a virtual reality headset at a friend's place and getting so absorbed that he forgot the people watching him. Afterwards it made him wonder whether we do the same thing in everyday life, getting so caught up in the next client or meeting that we forget the bigger picture.

Action: Spend five minutes today reflecting on what you'd want to have done if your time were limited, because it is.

Outcome: Ordinary days start to feel more meaningful.

Lesson 7: Breathe out a little longer

Insight: I asked Vahid what one thing he'd get every person to do. He said he'd make them exhale two seconds longer each time, or at least keep their exhales longer than four seconds. He joked that within two minutes we'd have world peace.

His reasoning is that inhaling tends to increase stress and exhaling tends to decrease it, slowing your heart and calming your nervous system. So every longer exhale takes a bit more stress out of your body.

He gave a simple practice you can do right now. Pay attention to your exhale and find the end of it. When you think you're done, see if you can breathe out a little more. Then don't force the inhale. Let it come naturally and notice how the bottom of your lungs feels.

Action: For the next two minutes, make each exhale longer than your inhale.

Outcome: You calm your nervous system without needing any equipment or app.

Quick wins

• Reframe shaking muscles as your body adapting.
• Decide now how you'll handle your next weak moment.
• When someone criticises you, ask what it says about them.
• Give a strong emotion 90 seconds before reacting.
• Make your exhale longer than your inhale.

Closing insight

Near the end, Vahid explained that if you're under 25 he'd start with the body, and between about 25 and 50 he'd focus more on the mind. But he says you can't do one without the other. Breath is your spirit, thinking is your mind and anything material is your body. They all have equal rights on the same stool. Take one away and the other two won't hold.

Connect with Vahid

Visit Wellness Assembly Services, follow Vahid on Instagram or find his book on Amazon.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or press play at the top of this page.

Related episodes: How to Awaken Your True Self Through Breathwork and Authenticity and Stop Chasing, Start Embodying with Aiden Domic