The role of doubt on the path of yoga

In many areas of practice, there is a widely held belief that doubt is an obstacle on the spiritual path.

Doubting the teaching. Doubting your practice. Doubting your feelings. Sometimes doubting what you believe you are seeking.

Throughout my own journey, several teachers have encouraged me to be wary of this doubt—to see it as a form of resistance. In order to progress, they say, one must surrender completely to something greater than oneself. One must trust. One must adhere. One must cultivate a sincere and stable faith in the process, in the practice, in the path.

For a long time, I believed that this doubt that constantly accompanied me was a sign of an inability to truly move forward. A chronic hesitation incompatible with any form of deep commitment. As if progress necessarily meant choosing a clear direction and sticking to it without wavering.

Over time, my perspective has changed.

Doubt as movement

Doubt is often perceived as a lack: a lack of faith, a lack of confidence, a lack of clarity.

But it can also be seen as a movement.

An inner movement that prevents us from freezing an experience into certainty.

That forces us to return, again and again, to what is actually experienced.

That invites us not to confuse words with experience, concepts with tangible reality.

On the mat, this doubt takes very concrete forms:

• Am I doing this pose “correctly”?

• Is this practice right for me today?

• Are my feelings accurate?

• Why am I here?

• Is this my path?

These questions are not always comfortable. They can give the impression of an unstable journey, of uncertain progress. Yet they open up a space for exploration. They prevent us from practicing automatically, out of conformity, or simply by repetition.

A ridge path

Yoga can be seen as a path along a ridge.

On one side, there is surrender, trust, and complete faith.

On the other, there is clear-sightedness, the development of lucidity, and a clearer mind.

Walking this path means learning to move between these two sides—sometimes closer to one, sometimes closer to the other. Some periods call for letting go, acceptance, a form of surrender. Others, on the contrary, require us to mobilize our discernment, to question, to observe with precision what is at work within us.

This back-and-forth movement is demanding. It is not an intellectual posture, but a lived experience that is built up over time through regular practice.

For our mind, powerful as it is, always plays tricks on us.

It anticipates, projects, interprets, compares.

It can support the practice, but it can also hinder it.

Putting the mind in its proper place

Certain philosophical texts on yoga invite us to work with this mind—not to suppress it, but to put it at the service of something deeper than itself.

In the Bhagavad Gita, it is said that “the mind can be the soul's best friend or its worst enemy.”

This ambivalence sums up the issue well: our mind can support us in understanding, lucidity, discernment... or, on the contrary, trap us in repetitive patterns, anticipations, and judgments that cloud our perception.

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras also describe yoga as a process of calming the fluctuations of the mind (citta vritti nirodha). Not to make all mental activity disappear, but so that it ceases to govern our perceptions, our reactions, our way of being in the world.

It is therefore a question of directing our capacity for analysis, understanding, and discernment towards a more refined form of inner listening.

Of ensuring that lucidity does not turn into control, and that confidence does not become blind abandonment.

Simply put, it is a question of putting the mind at the service of our deepest being. Our heart.

Avoiding stagnation

The risk, on any structured path, is to turn reference points into certainties.

To confuse regularity with rigidity.

To repeat actions without questioning their meaning.

Doubt, when it is not paralyzing, acts as an antidote to this stagnation. It forces us to re-examine, adjust, and reinvent.

It prevents us from believing that we have “arrived.”

It keeps open the possibility of change.

From this perspective, lack of confidence can become a form of lucidity: the awareness that the path is neither linear nor definitive. That it changes as we ourselves change.

A path that reflects who we are

There may not be a single right way to progress on a spiritual path.

For some, surrender and faith are essential supports.

For others, progress comes through exploration, back-and-forth movement, and uncertainty.

Learning to walk with doubt means accepting that our practice reflects who we are.

That it carries our fragilities as much as our aspirations.

That it is filled with questions rather than definitive answers.

And that it is precisely in this space—unstable, shifting, sometimes uncomfortable—that something continues to transform.

How about trying yoga in Grenoble ?