So, why do yoga? After all it has no real purpose, no goal. Enlightenment does not exist or if it does it is a brief flash and then everything is as it has been before. Eternal youth is unachievable and a flexible body grows old just as much as a stiff one. Levitation is fun the first time, but…you get the picture.

To remain healthy and whole of mind and body? Yes, that is a reason, but there are hundreds of other things you could rather do to achieve that.

To become flexible because you are a dancer, athlete, actor…? Yes, a very good reason. Yoga is a tool after all, not an end in itself.

To find inner peace? You will find that without yoga just as well. For example you could just sit down and not get up until you found it. I’m serious. Go sit down.

  Because I want to meet hot flexible girls or boys? Two years back I would have scoffed, but now I think it actually is a perfectly fine reason. Go for it. With style, though.

Because I’m burnt out? Quit your job and do something you’ve always wanted to do. You’re not overworked, you’re just fed up.

So – why do it? I like the story told by Aleister Crowley about how one can practice to become a magician. It’s easy, all you have to do it stand on a chair and get down twenty times each day, preferably in public. To shout “You are azure and full of love!” at the next person you meet in the street. To do a drawing or lead a conversation without ever asking yourself what the hell it means.

Because the less meaning it has, the more potential it has to become something meaningful. And the flip side is also true, because the more meaning we are projecting into something, the more we set ourselves up to be disappointed. Allow it to have no meaning at all. You do it because you do it and that is the best possible reason. Continue doing it until even the question for meaning has disappeared. Anything you can do like that is yoga, is meditation, is zen, is magic, is nothing, is whatever you want it to be.