"One little body is enough"
In a 1900 speech in San Francisco, Swami Vivekananda – the Indian spiritual leader credited with bringing yoga to America – mocked the legend of a yogi whose physical practice allowed him to live 500 years. The swami wondered why anyone would want to invest so much into physical prowess, saying "I would not want to live so long ... one little body with all its delusions and limitations is enough." As fate would have it, Vivekananda died two years later at the young age of 40. While we can't know for sure whether a few more yoga poses might have led him to a healthy old age, we might all agree that physical health could help us live to some comfortable age beyond 40 but shy of 500. To borrow the Buddha's terms, we can find a middle way.
The Sanskrit word for posture of the body is asana, which actually means "seat," and there is great value and diversity in the ways in which we might practice sitting in this world. To hold ourselves in shapes conducive to vital living requires a full range of suppleness and power, compassion and wakefulness, openness and discipline. Whether we seek to take the seat of an adept meditator, a powerful warrior, a wise teacher, a downward facing dog, or a simply healthy human, yoga offers a path for this "one little body" to make the most of itself.