Nick Williams Yoga & Massage Therapy

11/13/2025

Burnout in yoga isn’t just being physically tired. It's fatigue and pain associated with your practice coupled with the sense that you have to show up on your mat because yoga is WHO YOU ARE.

11/05/2025

It took me years to be honest with myself and admit that my yoga practice really wasn't that mystical.

I’ve never felt chakras or Kundalini energy.
I’ve never seen auras.
I’ve never downloaded from the akashic records.

Spiritual success seemed to be measured in mystical experiences and despite years or practicing I felt like I was failing.

Yoga doesn't require us to be superstitious and believe in anything outside our own experience. It just asks us to do the work of going inwards and examining ourselves.

It's possible to be both rational and spiritual. My current practice is informed both by yoga and Stoicism and has three themes:

Act with love and compassion in service to others. Aka Karma yoga or the Discipline of Action in Stoicism.

Feel awe and surrender to the grandeur of the universe. Don't attempt to control things that are beyond your power. Aka Bhakti yoga or the Discipline of Desires in Stoicism

Examine the judgements you make about your thoughts and experiences. The story you tell yourself becomes who you are. Aka Jnana yoga or the Discipline of Assent.

10/25/2025

The next time you see someone telling you about the correct way to do a yoga pose, pause and consider these three things:

Most yoga poses are not particularly dangerous for most people.
The incidence of injury for yoga is 0.6 per 1000 hours. (PMID 31357980) That's very safe even compared to mundane activities like running (7-17 injuries per 1000hrs) or weightlifting (1-4 injuries per 1000hrs) PMID 27707741 PMID 25951917
Unless you have a reason to, stressing out about asana alignment for safety reasons is probably unnecessary.

The ‘correct’ way to do any pose is going to depend on your personal history and your goals. Doing a pose one way may emphasize the glutes or shoulder and feel very muscular. Doing it another way may make the pose more restful and allow you to focus on breathing. Before you ask the correct way of doing the pose ask yourself why you're doing it.

Perfect alignment doesn't exist in the real world. If you're concentrating on having perfect posture while bending over to put on your shoes or walking upstairs something is wrong. The goal isn't to go through life with perfect posture, but to have the flexibility and strength to accommodate life's imbalances.

10/23/2025

10/19/2025

If you're practicing yoga for a health outcome your practice needs to follow principles of exercise science like any other kind of training program to be successful. That means keeping in mind this like progress overload, specificity to imposed demands, recovery, nutrition etc.

The secret to resolving back pain with yoga isn't in finding the right pose or breathing exercise.

The secret is doing ordinary training (exercises, diet, recovery etc) and being able to approach it with a yogic attitude.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches us to practice with nishkama karma - action without desire. There are numerous health benefits of practicing yoga. But in order for yoga to be yoga we have to practice with a sense of detachment from those benefits.

10/08/2025

If you have long hair and you're thinking about a new style, consider donating it. Somebody would appreciate it.

10/03/2025

Put simply yoga's proposal goes something like this:

There is an infinite, unchanging reality at the foundation of our everyday experience.

That reality is also at the root of our own consciousness.

By stripping away mental fluctuations like labels, definitions and judgments, we can experience that connection directly.

Now ask yourself: how much of that really has to do with stretching, handstands, or fixing back pain?
Here’s how I square the circle:

Experiencing consciousness without its objects is like a tongue trying to taste itself, or a camera trying to take a picture of itself. If you make it a matter of sheer willpower, you’ll almost certainly fail. It’s like trying to force yourself to fall asleep.

Instead, yoga happens when we set up the right conditions. That’s why yoga teaches us to pursue our goals, our duties, our dharma. We act with commitment and detachment and allow yoga to arise along the way.

Asanas give us a mold, not the cake. They’re a structure to pour our energy into. They provide focus and discipline, but they are not the point. The danger is mistaking the mold for the cake itself.

If your goal is better health or less back pain, that's great. That’s a far more meaningful pursuit than a handstand. But even health is still just a mold. The deeper practice is in how you pursue it, with abhyasa (dedicated effort) and vairagya (non-attachment).

So instead of asking, “What poses do I need to do for my back?” try asking, “What works for my back, and how can I approach it with yoga’s attitudes of abhyasa and vairagya?”

That shift is what keeps yoga alive, whether you’re on a mat, under a barbell, or out on a run.

07/02/2025

In modern yoga, we often view spirituality through the lens of neoliberal ideology: That transcendent experience is a kind of product that anyone can attain with the right teacher, the right technique, and enough effort.

It’s a seductive idea. It sounds empowering. But it’s also deeply unrealistic. It’s like saying anyone can play in the NBA if they just try hard enough.

We like to believe that all obstacles can be overcome through personal discipline. That myth of meritocracy is baked into modern culture. There is something to be said for pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. But our expectations have to be tempered by the confines of biology.

The yoga community knows that an asana practice can improve your flexibility, balance and strength. But we accept that not everyone will be able to do the splits or square their hips in warrior one due to their bone structure. In the same way a meditation practice can influence our nervous system, but our capacity for altered states is also determined by our neurobiology. PMID: 22013351 PMID: 6664802 PMID: 34489825

Many traditional schools of yoga accept that true liberation (moksha) might take lifetimes, perhaps waiting for an auspicious birth with the right neurochemistry. 

So while the ultimate goal of yoga may be spiritual union, for those of us practicing in this lifetime, it might be wiser to focus on something you are guaranteed to achieve through personal effort.

👉 Not transcendence, but personal development.
👉 Not samadhi, but cultivating virtue.
👉 Not fireworks but steady burning embers

06/26/2025

People in the yoga and wellness community are often incredibly health-conscious, which can be a strength and a vulnerability.

We eat clean, do our breathwork, keep, and stay curious about our bodies. But that same openness can make us more susceptible to pseudoscience, fear-based marketing, and expensive “miracle” fixes that don’t actually help.

🚩 Learn to recognize these RED FLAGS: The tactics scammers and wellness grifters use to create the illusion of credibility. These are all real examples from wellness influencers with thousands of followers. Awareness is the first step to protecting yourself and your students.

 

06/17/2025

There’s a parable in yoga about a man who buys a suit.
When he first puts it on, it fits perfectly—tailored just for him. But as the years go by, his body changes.

He gains weight, and the pants become too tight. Instead of adjusting the suit, he hikes the waistband up and starts walking with his knees slightly bent to keep the cuffs from riding too high.
Later, he notices the sleeves have become uneven. So he leans to one side as he walks, trying to make them match. Eventually, the jacket begins to sag, so he pins his elbows to his sides to hold its shape.

One day, a stranger sees him hobbling down the street and whispers,
“Poor man, what a twisted, disfigured body.”
To which his friend replies,
“Yes, but what a marvelous suit.”

Our yoga practice is meant to change with us. The poses, sequences, and routines are not the practice—they’re just the suit. And when the suit no longer fits our job is to recognize what the suit was covering up. Not rigid forms. Not perfection. But presence, awareness, compassion and the ability to let go of what no longer serves, even if it once fit perfectly.

The hardest lesson I’ve learned in yoga wasn’t how to bend my body. It was how to release the outer form of a practice that no longer supports my health and goals without letting go of the essence that made the practice valuable in the first place.