On Practice & Teaching

When doing a yoga practice, we come to various asanas. In approaching them, we’re already experiencing sensations. If we’re actually doing yoga rather than merely exercising, then we’re breathing consciously and using the breath to refine how we’re exploring the asana. Breathing consciously, we’re bringing more conscious awareness into the bodymind, ideally as suggested by the sensations that are arising in the moment, adapting our movement and positioning to be more stable, relaxed, and present. So there’s a dance of the breath with the bodymind, each affecting the other, all of it increasingly experienced as part of the whole of our being. This is the basic practice of always and forever integrating and awakening that is at the heart of yoga asana practice. In it, we can play with different breathing techniques, positions, and visualizations, exploring their various effects, including the inner dialogue and reactions that are an increasingly clear reflective mirror of our deeper qualities of being.