What’s the Difference Between Yoga and Gymnastics? - Ask a Yoga Teacher
With so many #yoga posts on Instagram showing expert-level handbalancing, airborne acro tricks, and impressive feats of strength and flexibility, one might wonder — what’s the difference between yoga and gymnastics?
Yoga vs. Gymnastics
Gymnastics is about athletics and aesthetics, while yoga is about the journey.
While both are physical practices that involve some of the same movements and skills — such as splits, handstands, deep backbends, etc. — yoga is all about the flow and working through a sequence to steadily arrive at each peak pose.
Despite the fancy poses you might see, it’s not even necessary to have advanced levels of flexibility and strength to practice yoga. That’s why it’s called a yoga practice — it’s focused on helping you gain deeper flexibility and strength, not on how well you can do the poses. Yoga also tends to be a more approachable and accessible practice for all ages and activity levels. The barrier to entry is much lower when all you need for yoga is a willing mind and a space to practice.
Gymnastics involves a competitive mindset, while yoga encourages you to let go.
The way you mentally approach both yoga and gymnastics is also different. Gymnastics and other physical performing arts involve aesthetics and competition, while yoga promotes stepping out of that competitive mindset and embracing the journey. A yoga teacher is more of a guide than a coach, encouraging you to explore what feels good rather than training you to “perform” your best.
This isn’t to say that you can’t weave mindfulness into performing arts or that people don’t focus on aesthetics or athletics in yoga, but the goals of each practice are usually different. Gymnastics values consistency in training, and the hard work and rigorous training regimen shows in gymnasts’ performances. You always need to be on your game. And while hard work and consistency is required to advance your gymnastics-like skills in yoga practice, it’s much more acceptable to have “off days” where your practice is more lightweight or relaxed. Your life doesn’t have to revolve around yoga, but rather, yoga enhances your quality of life.
You don’t need to move to do yoga.
Physical postures are only one element of yoga, which has eight different limbs designed to work together to help practitioners lead a purposeful, meaningful life. Some of the other limbs include breathwork, meditation, and concentration. While all of the different types of gymnastics involve movement, one could practice yoga without moving at all on their mat.
A Yoga Teacher Weighs In: What’s the Difference Between Yoga and Gymnastics?
We’ve broken down the main physical and mental differences between yoga and gymnastics. But when we stack up the same high-flying, advanced moves that yoga and gymnastics share, what separates the two? According to Alo Moves yoga instructor Dylan Werner, the difference all boils down to intention.
“Circus, gymnastics, hand balancing, etc., are performance arts; the intention is aesthetic,” says Werner. “The shapes and movements are beautiful, and the end goal is ultimately about how it looks. The posture can be exactly the same, but it becomes yoga when the intention is the journey of the pose, ultimately to bring us into a deeper state of awareness, connection, and understanding.”
So ultimately, we assign the meaning to the movement — you can make it yoga, or you can make it gymnastics. But when it comes to defining the difference between yoga and gymnastics, Werner asks another question: does it really matter?
“The words we speak, the thoughts we have, the life we live only has meaning because we give it meaning,” says Werner. “So what makes an asana or a posture yoga or circus? However you define this is correct. How can it be wrong if it is your truth about a practice or philosophy that is entirely subjectively experienced? Every position and transition can be both yoga or circus, and it is only our job to decide if what we are doing is or isn't yoga. Sri K Pattabhi Jois said, ‘Yoga is an internal practice.’ As my experience with the yoga practice evolves, so will my definition, just as it has many times already. We should also give others the same room for growth as we give ourselves. Trying to define what yoga is not will not be very helpful in our journey, but understanding everything that yoga is will bring us deeper into union.”
Want to practice yoga with Dylan Werner? Check out his online classes on Alo Moves with a free 14-day trial.