The goal of our yoga practice is to align and harmonize the physical body and all the layers of the subtle emotional, mental, and spiritual body. This is integration. But how do I align these layers and experience integration? How do I find such profound transformation in what from the outside may look simply like stretching or twisting the body into unusual positions? It begins with awareness.
We think of intelligence and perception as taking place exclusively in our brains, but yoga teaches us that awareness and intelligence must permeate the body. Each part of the body literally has to be engulfed by the intelligence. We must create a marriage between the awareness of the body and that of the mind.
When the two parties do not cooperate, it leads to a sense of fragmentation and "dis-ease." For example, we should only eat when our mouth spontaneously salivates, as it is the body's intelligence telling us that we are truly hungry. If not, we are force-feeding ourselves and "dis-ease" will surely follow.
Many of us today use our bodies so little that we lose the sensitivity of this bodily awareness. We move from bed to car to desk to car to couch to bed, but there is no awareness in our movement, no intelligence. There is no action. Action is movement with intelligence. The world is filled with movement. What the world needs is more conscious movement, more action.
Yoga teaches us how to infuse our movement with intelligence, transforming it into action. In fact, action that is introduced in an asana should excite the intelligence. When we initiate an action in asana and somewhere else in the body moves without our permission, the intelligence questions this and asks, "Is that right or wrong? If wrong, what can I do to change it?"
The more we practice these postures with awareness, the less we need a mirror or someone else to tell us that the back leg is not straight in warrior poses. If we practice awareness, we automatically can sense that the back leg is not correct without seeing it. We do not disconnect our back leg from our intelligence. We figure out a way to correct the position. Many students practice yoga with the same mind and leave the leg as is because we are waiting for the next posture or we lack the desire, motivation , intelligence to find a way to correct it.
Many students may feel I give too many corrections in class. I do it to increase our awareness, which harmonizes the body , mind and emotion. Which is the goal of yoga.
We think of intelligence and perception as taking place exclusively in our brains, but yoga teaches us that awareness and intelligence must permeate the body. Each part of the body literally has to be engulfed by the intelligence. We must create a marriage between the awareness of the body and that of the mind.
When the two parties do not cooperate, it leads to a sense of fragmentation and "dis-ease." For example, we should only eat when our mouth spontaneously salivates, as it is the body's intelligence telling us that we are truly hungry. If not, we are force-feeding ourselves and "dis-ease" will surely follow.
Many of us today use our bodies so little that we lose the sensitivity of this bodily awareness. We move from bed to car to desk to car to couch to bed, but there is no awareness in our movement, no intelligence. There is no action. Action is movement with intelligence. The world is filled with movement. What the world needs is more conscious movement, more action.
Yoga teaches us how to infuse our movement with intelligence, transforming it into action. In fact, action that is introduced in an asana should excite the intelligence. When we initiate an action in asana and somewhere else in the body moves without our permission, the intelligence questions this and asks, "Is that right or wrong? If wrong, what can I do to change it?"
The more we practice these postures with awareness, the less we need a mirror or someone else to tell us that the back leg is not straight in warrior poses. If we practice awareness, we automatically can sense that the back leg is not correct without seeing it. We do not disconnect our back leg from our intelligence. We figure out a way to correct the position. Many students practice yoga with the same mind and leave the leg as is because we are waiting for the next posture or we lack the desire, motivation , intelligence to find a way to correct it.
Many students may feel I give too many corrections in class. I do it to increase our awareness, which harmonizes the body , mind and emotion. Which is the goal of yoga.