“Not a Battle, but a Balance”: An honest conversation with Adam Keen on Reclaiming the Purpose of Practice.

Adam Keen has been walking the path of Ashtanga yoga for over 25 years, but his journey began in the most unexpected place: a university philosophy classroom.  Authorised Level 2 by Sharath Jois in 2012 and one of the few practitioners to complete Advanced A series in Mysore, Adam now hosts the popular Keen on Yoga podcast and teaches internationally.

This November, he returns to Purple Valley Goa for a full-month retreat – joined by co-teachers Magnus Fridh and Daniel Simpson – to share a way of practicing that is, in his words, transformational.  We sat down with Adam to talk about his personal evolution, what it means to practise honestly, and why the deepest changes happen not when we push harder, but when we learn to feel more.

How did you first discover yoga, and what drew you to this path?

Adam: I started at university, doing a philosophy degree.  I suddenly realised that what I was trying to solve in my head through various treatments and talking therapies, there was something in the body that needed to be resolved.  It was an energy, and I had that intuition very strongly.

I’d done martial arts as a kid, but those didn’t involve anything energetic really.  I had this intuition that maybe if I did something even more subtle with body energy – not just the muscles – that something might be changed by repatterning the energy through certain physical movements.

I didn’t get into it for any fitness idea, or because it was fashionable.  No one did yoga at that time.  It was something that maybe certain middle-aged ladies did.  It wasn’t cool in any way.  It was just something I really needed.  I needed to feel better in myself and about my life, and it worked from day one.  I also happened to be quite flexible, so I got enmeshed in it easily because I was able to do the postures.  The body became my first teacher in a way.

What did the practice give you, early on?

Adam: It gave me a structure.  I was a typical student – drinking, partying, trying to avoid facing myself.  But daily practice started shaping my lifestyle in a completely different way.  It wasn’t about achievement or performance.  It was about feeling grounded.

Looking back, I think yoga did what nothing else could: it worked on the nervous system, not just to regulate, but to help me move through the deeper stuff—trauma, stored energy, old habits.  That’s still what it means to me today.

You’ve spoken a lot about the dangers of performative yoga.  Did you ever get caught in that trap?

Adam: Absolutely.  I think most people do.  Ironically, I came to yoga from a place of genuine need.  But after a few years, especially during my time in Mysore, that intention got clouded.  I had a certain physical ability, and people started praising me for it.  It’s easy to conflate that with spiritual progress.  You start performing, even subconsciously – postures, identity, status.  And you forget why you started.

The postures, in the first place, were based on performance.  They’re based on Krishnamacharya having to make young boys in Mysore do these yoga performances.  So they’re meant to be stunning, they’re meant to look good.  In this visually-based culture, it’s easy to get gratification by doing postures that differentiate ourselves as more able, as better, as more special.  The danger is that we assume flexibility or complexity in the body equals openness in the mind.  But it’s not true. 

It’s only more recently – a few years before the pandemic, during it, and subsequently – that I really came out of the other end of that and started asking those deeper questions about yoga again.  Why I originally got into it, and what it does on a deeper level for people. 

You talk about yoga working with the nervous system in a unique way.  Can you explain this?

Adam: We’ve got Hatha Yoga, which is the root of all yoga, based on this idea of ‘Hatha’ meaning force – a mechanical force using the physical body to affect the mind.  How you do that is to affect pressure on the spine.

In the modern world, we take it the wrong way around.  We think yoga is about stretching outwards because we perceive tension as the problem.  There’s deep tension in ourselves – karma, trauma, whatever – stored in the nervous system.  We assume that pushing against that tension would release us.

But the Hatha yoga idea is that tension isn’t stored just in ligaments or muscles – it’s stored much deeper, in the very energy of the body.  To get to that level, you have to create pressure on the spine rather than dispersing tension.  We’re trying to create tension on the spine to get into a state of dysregulation in the nervous system in order to re-regulate.

It’s cathartic.  You cannot just let go.  You’re meant to be going into that level of stimulation so the mind can think again.  It gives a small gap where you may process stimulation differently.

Can you give a practical example of this approach?

Adam: Take a forward fold.  Most people perform it passively – just stretching out of themselves as far as they can, pushing against tension in one direction only.  What I’m suggesting is creating an active stretch by pulling against the tension, so the arrows of tension go towards the center, towards the central channel.

This creates a light sense of stimulation on the nerves of the spine, which unsettles the natural shape of the mind. The mind has its certain patterns—like paths through long grass that get worn deeper with repetition. These mental and emotional patterns trap us.

The Hatha yoga approach mechanically reroutes the mind by sending a sense of dysregulation that breaks the consistent communication between mind and body, allowing for neuroplasticity.  But here’s the key: the body becomes the teacher.  When you create this right tension, the body starts to show you things your mind never could.  It’s not about imposing your will on the body, but learning to listen to what it’s trying to tell you.

What transformation do you hope students experience in your retreats?

Adam: If you’re interested in this method – which I was taught by my teacher Mark Darby who taught at Purple Valley – it transforms the way you do the postures.

First of all, you’re not battling constantly against yourself.  You find balance in the body, so you’re not constantly trying to push forward.  You find a sense of being with yourself.  Secondly, it makes the postures feel more comfortable and safer.  The pains go away because you’re not pushing yourself into hypermobility.

That’s the turning point: when you realise the practice isn’t a battle to win, but a balance to feel.

That shift is huge.  The pain goes away.  The need for external validation goes away.  The practice becomes something deeply personal, sustainable, and safe.  It stops being about how far you can push and starts being about how deeply you can listen.  And the irony is, you often make more progress that way – because you’re working with the body, not against it.

You’re bringing in guest teachers this year.  Can you tell us a bit about them?

Adam: I’m very excited about the guest teachers I’ve chosen.  The first two weeks, I’m working with Magnus Fridh, who’s a meditation teacher we worked with last year.  He’s really, really great—does breathwork beautifully and is a Buddhist meditation practitioner with training in Nepal.  I’m very convinced by his knowledge and the way he guides the class.

Often I find with meditation, there’s a lack of clear instructions.  Yoga doesn’t really have a meditation tradition within it, but Buddhism does, and Buddhism gives very specific techniques of working with the mind.  Magnus brings a rigor to the meditation practices, and he also does Yoga Nidra and breathwork beautifully.  Very relaxing at the end of the day, holding a very gentle, calm, and safe space.

For the second two weeks, Daniel Simpson is very different.  He’s a yoga scholar, a modern scholar of yoga philosophy.  As a journalist, which is his background, he’s very, very clear.  He doesn’t have a particular religious perspective, which I like, so he’s able to take a broader, more objective overview of yoga history.

He’s probably the first person I’d turn to for someone trying to learn the very complicated background of yoga philosophy, which is varied, contradictory sometimes, and fairly obscure.  Daniel reduces that to easy soundbites, easy ways of understanding it for the general layperson without any religious background.  People can then choose to pursue whichever perspective on yoga they wish to.  He gives a foundational overview of the whole terrain of yoga – very honored to have him there.

Looking ahead, where do you see Ashtanga Yoga heading?

Adam: Honestly, I think we’re at a crossroads.  The old structures in Mysore are changing.  There’s a vacuum, and as always, people are trying to fill it – sometimes with power, sometimes with commercial leverage.  I don’t believe authorisation or certification necessarily reflects quality.  What I’d like to see is a broader understanding: that what we’re doing here is not about lineage for lineage’s sake, but about working with energy, breath, nervous system – Hatha Yoga in its deeper sense.

If we stop fighting about sequences and start seeing them as tools – logistical frameworks for teaching – then the practice becomes freer.  More honest.  And less about who gets to decide what yoga is.

Last one: what’s one word with which you hope students describe your retreats and teachings?

Adam: Honest. 

I hope they feel like they’re getting the tools to empower themselves, which is lacking in the yoga world.  I hope they see that I’m not selling them my perspective or my lifestyle.  I’m trying to help them get tools for their own sovereignty, their own autonomy – to use themselves, to make themselves stand alone.

The body knows things the mind doesn’t.  When students learn to trust the body as teacher, they stop needing external validation.  They stop looking to me or any teacher to tell them they’re doing it right.  The body becomes their guide.

That’s the idea of yoga: Kaivalya, aloneness, to stand alone.  Not to stand behind any teacher who can tell you what to do or make you happy by adjusting you in Kapotasana or anything else.

Adam Keen will be teaching his month-long intensive in Goa this November, joined by Buddhist meditation teacher Magnus Fridh (08/11-22/11/25) and yoga scholar Daniel Simpson (22/11-06/12/25).  Together, they offer a rare combination of practical body wisdom, rigorous meditation technique, and philosophical clarity, creating space for the body to become your most trusted teacher.