Why I’m Done Apologizing for Depth in Practice

Standards, Responsibility, and the Refusal to Dilute What Makes Practice Real

I’m no longer interested in explaining why depth matters.

Not because I’m defensive. Because there’s nothing left to defend.

When the need to belong dissolves, what remains isn’t attitude or edge. What remains is responsibility.

Depth isn’t elitism. It’s what’s left when performance drops away.

At Burning Wheel Yoga School, intensity isn’t treated as a personality trait or a branding angle. It’s treated as Śakti (SHOK-tee), the power to engage fully with what is actually happening. Fully present. Fully embodied. Fully here.

This is why the practice has standards. Standards tell the truth.

Most modern yoga has been shaped by convenience. Shorter attention spans. Lower thresholds. A quiet agreement to keep things comfortable enough that no one has to face their edges, triggers, or stay with discomfort.

That approach leaves sincere students undernourished.

What we see is a wide continuum of capacity. People arrive with different nervous systems, different histories, and different thresholds for sensation and effort. Some are meeting physical rigor for the first time. Others are rediscovering it after years away. Some move easily toward intensity. Others approach it gradually. All of that belongs.

What matters is the method.

At Burning Wheel, we choose a physically rigorous practice as the gateway because intensity reveals where each person actually is. Not to judge it. To meet it. Mindfulness doesn’t disappear with effort. It becomes more precise. Attention sharpens. Choice becomes visible.

People choose this practice because they sense that intensity and kindness can coexist. Because they know no one is being coerced or carried. Each person is invited to choose their path in real time. Stay or go. Continue or stop. Show up fully, or step back when needed.

That choice is the practice.

In 8-Limb Power Yoga, discipline is framed as devotion.

Devotion to clarity.

Devotion to showing up when there’s no identity payoff. When you’re no longer performing “being spiritual.” When no one is watching. When the body is working, the breath is loud, and attention has to decide whether it stays or leaves.

That’s where intensity becomes useful.

Not as force.

As connection.

I learned this personally through my own practice.

There was a point when I realized I was highly capable, highly trained, and still subtly negotiating. Negotiating effort. Negotiating depth. Negotiating how much I was willing to stay when there seemed to be no reward. I was compromising my value by basing it on recognition, approval, and praise from others.

That was the moment I met myself clearly.

Not through collapse.

Through direct, unflinching contact.

Through staying when there was nothing to perform and no one to impress. Through letting practice strip away the need to be seen as disciplined, advanced, or insightful. What remained was capacity. Attention. Choice.

Intensity, when trained correctly, removes distortion. It shows how quickly the mind reaches for exits. How often we leave the body the moment sensation becomes inconvenient. How much of our freedom has actually been avoidance.

This is where the teaching from the lineage becomes lived.

Śakti is tangible energy. She’s the moment you stay present instead of dissociating. She’s the decision to breathe now, not later. She’s effort without aggression.

When practice gets honest, identity stops being the center. There’s no image to manage. No narrative to maintain. There’s sensation, breath, and choice. Approval loses its grip because there’s no one left asking for it.

That’s why I’m done apologizing for depth.

Depth doesn’t make us special.

Depth makes practice real.

Burning Wheel exists for practitioners who can feel that comfort and freedom are not the same thing. People who can grasp that capacity creates options, and options create agency.

True freedom comes from being able to meet intensity without collapsing.

This is not casual yoga.

It was never meant to be.

It’s a training ground for attention, for nervous systems, for embodied intelligence. A place where responsibility is assumed, and where discipline is understood as intelligence, not rigidity.

We don’t raise the bar to prove anything. We raise it because once depth is tasted, lowering it would be dishonest.

This practice filters naturally.

By resonance.

If you want to understand how this practice was shaped, not as a brand but as a method, read From Power Yoga to 8-Limb Power Yoga: My Quest for a Balanced Practice.