Yoga Poses Quotes

Yoga means addition - addition of energy, strength and beauty to body, mind and soul.

Yoga is the space where flower blossoms.

The 114 chakras, the 84 yoga poses and the 84 ragas of Indian classical music all work together to bring melody in life.

Nowadays, people resort to all kinds of activities in order to calm themselves after a stressful event: performing yoga poses in a sauna, leaping off bridges while tied to a bungee, killing imaginary zombies with imaginary weapons, and so forth. But in Miss Penelope Lumley's day, it was universally understood that there is nothing like a nice cup of tea to settle one's nerves in the aftermath of an adventure- a practice many would find well worth reviving.

When life is foggy, path is unclear and mind is dull, remember your breath. It has the power to give you the peace. It has the power to resolve the unsolved equations of life.

Yoga is bringing fitness in body, calmness in mind, kindness in heart and awareness in life.

I had discovered something; there was a pleasure in becoming something new. You could will yourself into a fresh shape. Now all I had to do was figure out how to do it out there, in my life.

The yoga pose is not the goal. Becoming flexible is not the goal. Standing on your hands is not the goal. The goal is serenity. Balance. Truly finding peace in your own skin.

Corpse Pose sounds like no big deal, right? Then what’s so difficult about this spiritualized snooze? Forget about getting your feet behind your head. Just try lying still for ten minutes. With nothing left to do, you’re finally forced to come face to face with yourself.

What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?

If you have to force it, leave it. Friendships. Yoga poses. Relationships. Food. A fart. No matter what, that shit ain’t worth it. -Note to Self Kitt

An asana, or yoga pose, is a container for an experience. An asana is not an exercise for strengthening or stretching a particular muscle or muscle group, although it might have that effect.

Yoga talks about cat-pose, dog-pose, camel-pose, monkey-pose, bird-pose etc. Why there are so many animal poses? Animals release their emotions and tensions by movements based on their body sensations. But our amygdala in the brain is carrying the “fight or flight response”; it has forgotten the art of releasing the tensions. As human beings, when we are aware about the sensations, we can release that by aware, slow movements. If you do not give movements to the body parts, energy will be stuck and blood circulation will be disturbed. Gradually, that creates chronic physical and mental health problems.

Coffee, my delight of the morning; yoga, my delight of the noon. Then before nightfall, I run along the pleasant paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg. For when air cycles through the lungs, and the body is busy at noble tasks, creativity flows like water in a stream: the artist creates, the writer writes.

...it's most important to accept that your yoga poses may not look like everyone else's. That's okay. Just adapt the poses to your current state of being.

We’re sisters. Sisters are supposed to tell.” “Yes, but I’m the oldest.” She went into some complicated upside-down yoga pose. “Oldest sisters are supposed to be perfect.” “Says who?” “Older sisters.

Reality is an easy commodity in the Front Range. There's weather, and there are animals that are thinking about eating you, and there's all that beauty. It sort of whomps you on the head. It's strange that we use the word "unreal" to describe beauty-it's my experience that beauty drags us by the hair into the real.

I carefully lifted out of the pose and spoke up: "Uh, Fran? When I'm doing the pose (camel), I have this feeling in my chest, kind of a scary, tight feeling." Fran was adjusting someone across the room. She had a way of looking like a thoughtful seamstress when she made adjustments: an inch let out here, a seam straightened there, and everything would be just right. She might as well have had pins tucked between her lips and a tape measure around her neck. Without missing a beat or looking up she said, "Oh, that's fear. Try the pose again." Fear. I hadn't even known it was there.

Yoga is the science of well-being and youthfulness. It is the science of integrating the body, mind, and soul.

Your thoughts determine your actions. Your actions create your habits. Your habits form your character. Your character determines your destiny.

I learned early on that most yoga poses are about showing off. You find something amazing you can do, and suddenly, Shazam—you’re a guru, ready for your groupies.

Asana has two facets, pose and repose. Pose is the artistic assumption of a position. ‘Reposing in the pose’ means finding the perfection of a pose and maintaining it, reflecting in it with penetration of the intelligence and with dedication.

She lowers her forehead to the floor, curling starlight tendrils under her face when she rocks in the yoga pose, so tempting and sexy even in her deepest despair. Her courage is failing and I wait it out, watching the prone woman bend subconsciously in prostrate worship. She knows who I am or she wouldn't do that.

No matter where you go in the world, a German will have beaten you there, clad in a sweaty black T-shirt and a smug expression.

भोर प्रहर— शीर्षासन मुद्रा में नवयुवक ।

Jonathan's voice was quiet now. "Thank you for sharing this evening with me. In yoga, we say 'Namaste,' which means 'I bow to the divine in you.'" He bowed his dork-knobbed head and said, "Namaste." We bowed back and mumbled, "Namaste." On my tongue, the new word felt as though it contained its own foreign spice.

How did everyone else know how to do yoga? The one advantage to all of this was that it cleared Stevie's mind of everything. She heard exercise did that. Was this what they meant? You were so busy being confused and trying to stop your sweaty hands from slipping on a mat that you couldn't think anymore? Stevie did approve of the fact that yoga ended by lying on the floor in a corpse pose.

Most people think yoga is simply a form of exercise, but as you know, it’s much deeper than that. It’s about mindfulness, about focus. It helps us see things as they truly are.

Pure things give off positive energy; impure things don’t.

Yoga is just gymnastics for uncoordinated people.

She has also found nirvana in wearing yoga pants with no intention of doing poses, peace in ignoring ingredient lists, calories, and macro counts.

Lately my thing is inventing new yoga poses. The Onion is one. You make yourself very round, then peel yourself, limb by limb.

...it feels as if mountain pose is the most challenging of all yoga poses. To be still. To be grounded. To claim one's place in the world.

It had turned out that climbing a tree was more difficult than it looked. It was harder than warrior pose in yoga, than teaser in Pilates, than the elliptical or the Reformer. Rebecca thought that if no one had thought of it yet, soon enough someone in the city would spearhead a craze for tree climbing in Central and Prospect Parks, and it would become the talk of every cocktail party: have you tried that large oak by the Sheep Meadow? Oh, it’s completely changed my body.

The way I touch earth and heaven at once, stretching from soil to sky. The way the mat holds my feet and my feet hold me. The way it seems so simple, something to be brushed off as ‘too easy,’ and the way it is actually foundational. The way I know that when I am in it, I am it— unshakeable no matter what winds blow or rains pour down. It is as if I remain, eternal, undaunted, majestic. —mountain pose

The purpose of yoga is not to put your foot behind your head. Or do the splits. Or perfect a handstand. Yoga is about more than pretty poses. It's about healing. Thriving. Understanding what it means to be truly alive.

Lord Shiva invented the 84 lakhs yoga postures. He derived these postures just by observing the evolution and the journey of the soul in 84 lakh possible births. They are linked to the 84 ragas and 84 primary yoga postures.

The next half hour was devoted to a series of painful yoga positions. Gwendolyn, for a woman in her sixties, was disturbingly limber. As the minute hand inched toward the nine, she straightened up from her King Pigeon Pose with an ecstatic sigh that must have made someone besides me uncomfortable.

The main hindrance is one's own antagonistic frame of mind. All the systems of Yoga in India and every form of religious discipline, worship, or prayer is designed to overcome the barriers posed by the overcritical intellect, by dogma, skepticism, ego, pride, and other recalcitrant traits of the mind.

Yoga is a path of liberation from the attachment to both mind and matter. It is a door to the inner world and a life devoted to inner peace. Physical form and poses, although useful along the way, are not the end goal. It simply does not matter whether your hamstrings are long or your body is toned if you are not a nice person.

A fair portion of my anger had returned, but alongside it ran the memory of those few seconds on the yoga mat in the death pose. I felt as if I had been shown a kind of essential secret, something so subtle and quiet and small(and yet so important)that I could gone my entire adult life and never even imagined such a thing existed.

Your mind, emotions, and body are tightly intertwined.  What affects one will impact the other.

Not for us the difficult poses, not for us the no-pain-no-gain, OK? Because to be truly happy you do not need to be a pretzel, you just need to walk without creaking.

Desikachar helps us realize that what is essential in the practice of yoga is the breath because each pose, each movement, originates from there.

The Eye of the Needle

flat feet, gas

Take a Tree Pose in your life.

Although yoga is supposedly noncompetitive, I can’t help that my Alpha nature requires that I go for the hardest variation of every pose, always pushing my limits as far as possible.

When I'm in yoga class, and I'm in the Tree Pose, I always pretend I'm the Tree of Knowledge. To help further the fantasy I come to class with my yoga shorts stuffed with two apples.

Raja yoga with asanas (poses and breathing) is a way of leading the inquirer to direct personal experience of the “beyond that is within.” Its method is willed introversion, one of the classic implements of creative genius in any line of endeavor. Its intent is to drive the psychic energy of the self to its deepest part to activate the last continent of the true self

Afterward, she'd do yoga on the front lawn in the mizzling rain, lying on her back and then lifting herself slowly into an arch, like a demolition shown in reverse. The pose had mysterious names: Downward Dog, Sun Salute. Once I found her lying on the grass in a random-looking sprawl, the palms of her hands turned up to the drizzle. "The Corpse," she explained later. "Feels wonderful.

You know when you’re in yoga and you’re looking around, thinking, Wow, I wish I were that flexible, or How come she can hold that pose? Well, my friend has a saying: “Stay on your own mat.” Not physically, but mentally. In life, we’re all made differently: our families, our frames, our personalities and talents. Appreciate how you were made, and stay on your mat. That’s where happiness lies.

Now we’re going to transition into the pigeon pose,” the female instructor said serenely. “I don’t know what that is!” Lacey yelled at the TV. “Why don’t you ever explain it to us?” With that, yoga was over.

Now I know why I don’t bother with yoga—it’s too hard, that’s why. When I did “dog pose” I thought I’d never be able to get up again. I’ll just have a lie down and relax with an uplifting book for a few minutes.

Through the deeply theraputic practice of asana, we begin to purify our karmas, thereby healing our past relationships with others and reestablishing a steady and joyful connection with the Earth, which means all beings.

I began yoga to move my body but I didn’t know that was only the hook. On the mat, I have used my body not only to discover new shapes and poses, but I have found that in the poses I have discovered me. It is my eyes that now see new shapes— perspective clear and shifted. And my soul that has risen up and called to me. The truth of who I am is unfolding. I have stepped through the back door of my heart, to the place that meets my soul. I rest in my true nature. —yoga changes everything

The yogic practices help us release memories without having to express them either outwardly or in dreams. They also help dissolve unwanted thoughts and feelings as they are forming, relieving the need to see them to fruition or preserve them for a later time. Sometimes while sitting still in meditation or holding an asana (pose), a memory will escape from the bottom of the mental-emotional lake. Like a bubble, it will float through layers of the subconscious and then pop on the surface of the conscious mind.

And did you know that by opening Google in your browser you have access to more information than Bill Clinton had when he was president? Yet, this progress comes at a cost. We are constantly tempted to keep up with Joneses and chase the newest shiny object.

Yoga is often referred to as a moving meditation. In yoga, one goes deeply inward, connecting with the Divine while simultaneously moving the body in a beneficial and life-enhancing way. One does not force the pose or fall asleep. It is awake, reverent attention.

Ultimately, no yoga teacher can tell you what you need--not in a pose, not in a diet, not in a lifestyle. They can give you the principles, but it is up to you to use your intuition to find what is right for you. You have to practice your own naturalness, and that is what Baptiste Power Yoga is all about.

The word asana is usually translated as “pose” or “posture,” but its more literal meaning is “comfortable seat.” Through their observations of nature, the yogis discovered a vast repertoire of energetic expressions, each of which had not only a strong physical effect on the body but also a concomitant psychological effect. Each movement demands that we hone some aspect of our consciousness and use ourselves in a new way. The vast diversity of asanas is no accident, for through exploring both familiar and unfamiliar postures we are also expanding our consciousness, so that regardless of the situation or form we find ourselves in, we can remain “comfortably seated” in our center.

Life on the Mat “I roll it out and step inside a world of self-discovery, mine. Here is where I challenge myself, to learn just how to be myself… to grow and reach and stretch and sweat, I push my boundaries, no regrets. For this is where I seem to be, a stronger, better newer me. And when my body’s fully spent, my spirit takes a forward step, I contemplate the wisdom’s known, relinquished now, in Child’s pose.

If a mini-habit isn’t working, it’s probably just too big. Make it smaller and let it grow organically. Committing to one workout per day might not sound like much, but it can easily get lost in the whirlpool of daily living. Trim it down to something stupidly easy, quick, and unskippable: a couple of sets of body-weight exercises to failure or a 15-minute walk, for example. The mini-habit tool is incredibly versatile. You can apply it to just about any endeavor and immediately reap the benefits. For example… • Read five pages of the book you want to finish. • Write 50 words on your project. • Do 10 minutes of that exercise DVD. • Lift weights one day per week. • Practice your yoga poses for 5 minutes. • Follow your meal plan for one day. • Cook one new recipe per week. • Give one compliment per day. • Replace one cup of soda with water. You get the idea. So, what major, scary change do you want to make in your life? And what’s the stupidest, simplest action you can take every day to nudge the needle in that direction? There’s your breadcrumb of a mini-habit. Pick it up and see where the trail takes you.

Sanskrit word tapas means “to heat,” and when used in yoga it speaks to the practice of “standing in the fire for the sake of positive change,” says Stephanie Snyder. Literally, this means holding a difficult pose, feeling the burn as muscles tighten and contract, maintaining the mental focus it takes to stay in the pose—and choosing to endure all this in the name of becoming stronger, more agile, unfuckwithable. Applied metaphorically to our Sober Curiosity, it means sitting in whatever WTF we happen to be experiencing as a result of not drinking, watching it pass, and choosing to focus on the positive parts of the experience. These positives

I was working from home at the time and sometimes indulged in a little wander around my yard, a hard reset before I got back to work. Today, however, I had ignored the nice weather and instead put my head on my desk, forehead pressed to the Formica and arms covering my skull. I had joked with one of my yoga-loving co-workers that I was developing a series of poses that we could do at our desks. A head-in-hands slump over galleys called "Drudge's Hunch". The arms overhead seated stretch called "Fluorescent Salutation". The hand out position used to catch the fire door so it didn't slam and bother everyone. That was "Worrier's Pose". My current pose was called "Nuclear Fallout".

It was in Warrior Pose that I understood that my role as a mother must include both deep-rooted stability and openhearted freedom. Practicing the Warrior, my feet press firmly into the earth. My core is stable. I am grounded while my torso floats free, vulnerable, open and welcoming to the fates. The morning after sending my twenty-year-old daughter back to college, I went to my yoga mat and realized that this is precisely the balance I was seeking with her quest for independence and my desire to support and protect her. Instead of a tug-of-war between protecting and letting go, I saw that practicing the union of these two essential qualities is the way to love my daughter completely.

WHM PROTOCOL: BASIC MINDSET EXERCISE The greatest accomplishment you can achieve is stillness of the mind. It is only when your mind is still that you can go from external to internal programming. In the absence of thoughts, this stillness brings your feelings into alignment with your innermost being, reflecting the true self in a direct mirror. This is how I was able to set all of my records, and you can do it too. First, take a step away and find a comfortable place to sit down. Then begin to follow the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. Peacefully following the breath. Deeply in, letting go. Deeply in, letting go. A sense of calm will begin to settle over you, and it is in this moment that you can set your mind. Begin to scan your body while visualizing what it is you are going to do. Perhaps you want to stay longer in the cold shower or achieve a new personal record for push-ups. Maybe you want to hold a particularly challenging yoga pose or take a longer bike ride than you ever have before. Now is the time to scan your body and set your intention. Take your time with it. Tell your body what you expect it to do. Scan yourself for how you feel. You will be able to detect any misalignment of your intention and your body’s feeling. Just remain calm, keep breathing, and wait for the moment in which there is a sense of trust, of centered energy, of alignment. Give power to that feeling with your breath and then go and do what you intend to do. Success.

Please note, because the images are moments isolated from the full phrase of movement, there is no way to know the sequence in which the movements were made. The order in which things are listed is not any indication of what sequence is best, appropriate, or most effective. There is no single correct way to get into or out of these poses, and each choice you make will give rise to a different experience.

Greed presents itself as the longing for both the material and the nonmaterial, especially wanting more than is needed. However, whatever you stockpile - be it diamonds, big houses, fame, money, proficiency at advanced yoga poses, or less flashy things, you will inevitably encounter two certainties. First, ... all will be lost. Second, these things in and of themselves will never satisfy your cravings, which are expressions of your feelings of fear and emptiness. You see, sometimes we temporarily lose our way, becoming convinced that if we acquire this thing or that skill, we will finally become acceptable to ourselves and to the world. In our fear, we have forgotten that we are already whole.

If we really want to examine the roots of yoga, we need to go back to the Harrapan culture, dating back 3,500 years, when yoga was a meditative practice. According to some, around 1500BCE, Harrapan culture was diminished due to Aryan invasion. Barbarians from Normandy introduced the caste system and enforced a set of religious rituals that involved blood

(female yoga master). Krishnamacharya also educated his son Desikachar in yoga. An engineer by training, Desikachar saw great value in studying yoga only when he was already a college graduate. Desikachar developed Vinyoga, which is a more therapeutic and less intense approach to physical practice,

A person sitting in lotus pose, their mind serene and pure.

Be Careful of Potentially Unsafe Exercises While it is true that any bone in the body can fracture when exercising due to a fall or some other mishap, some exercises pose a higher risk for people with osteoporosis. As we learned in Chapter 1, fractures of the spine are the most common fractures that people experience, especially as they get older. Therefore, when we engage in controlled exercise poses or routines—for instance, in yoga or strength training—it is vital to protect the spine. Following are some of the exercises that are not recommended for people who have a moderate or high risk for fractures: • forward bending • shoulder stands • twists (rotational moves for the spine) • jackknife (legs bent over the head)

Life is like a sticky mat; each circumstance in which we find ourselves is like a pose. Some poses are hard to hold; others are pleasant. But it is how we hold the pose that determines whether or not we will suffer or grow, and whether or not we will listen to the drama of the ego or the wisdom of our Spirit.

As a yogi, you should never ignore savasana. This is because relaxation is an important part of yoga, which brings balance to your body. Furthermore, you can distract the class if you walk out during savasana.

Vinyasa is a fast-paced type of yoga. Its main aim is usually to link your movement and breath together with a series of yoga poses in a dance-like

yoga is a Hindu system that aims at achieving the spiritual union of your inner self with the Supreme Being in a form of complete tranquility and awareness.

Yoga is all about connecting your body and mind through breathing and movements that relax the mind and increase the level of flexibility and fitness in your body.

Q: What is the difference between yoga and other conventional exercises? A: Conventional exercise is any physical activity that cultivates, arouses and strengthens the vital organs of your body, but yoga is simply a discipline that mainly focuses on integrating your physical, mental and spiritual fitness. In short, yoga is more than a physical body workout as it emphasizes on matching your breath with your movement, which provides you with spiritual and mental benefits.

All about Yoga Beauty Health.Yoga is a gathering of physical, mental, and otherworldly practices or teaches which started in antiquated India. There is a wide assortment of Yoga schools, practices, and objectives in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Among the most surely understood sorts of yoga are Hatha yoga and Rāja yoga. The birthplaces of yoga have been theorized to go back to pre-Vedic Indian conventions; it is said in the Rigveda however in all probability created around the 6th and fifth hundreds of years BCE,in antiquated India's parsimonious and śramaṇa developments. The order of most punctual writings depicting yoga-practices is indistinct, varyingly credited to Hindu Upanishads. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the main portion of the first thousand years CE, however just picked up noticeable quality in the West in the twentieth century. Hatha yoga writings risen around the eleventh century with sources in tantra Yoga masters from India later acquainted yoga with the west after the accomplishment of Swami Vivekananda in the late nineteenth and mid twentieth century. In the 1980s, yoga wound up noticeably well known as an arrangement of physical exercise over the Western world.Yoga in Indian conventions, be that as it may, is more than physical exercise; it has a reflective and otherworldly center. One of the six noteworthy standard schools of Hinduism is likewise called Yoga, which has its own epistemology and transcendentalism, and is firmly identified with Hindu Samkhya reasoning. Beauty is a normal for a creature, thought, protest, individual or place that gives a perceptual ordeal of delight or fulfillment. Magnificence is examined as a major aspect of style, culture, social brain research, theory and human science. A "perfect delight" is an element which is respected, or has includes broadly ascribed to excellence in a specific culture, for flawlessness. Grotesqueness is thought to be the inverse of excellence. The experience of "magnificence" regularly includes a translation of some substance as being in adjust and amicability with nature, which may prompt sentiments of fascination and passionate prosperity. Since this can be a subjective ordeal, it is frequently said that "excellence is entirely subjective. Health is the level of practical and metabolic proficiency of a living being. In people it is the capacity of people or groups to adjust and self-oversee when confronting physical, mental, mental and social changes with condition. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterized wellbeing in its more extensive sense in its 1948 constitution as "a condition of finish physical, mental, and social prosperity and not simply the nonappearance of sickness or ailment. This definition has been liable to contention, specifically as lacking operational esteem, the uncertainty in creating durable wellbeing procedures, and on account of the issue made by utilization of "finish". Different definitions have been proposed, among which a current definition that associates wellbeing and individual fulfillment. Order frameworks, for example, the WHO Family of International Classifications, including the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), are usually used to characterize and measure the parts of wellbeing. yogabeautyhealth.com

Gabrielle Dunbar paced for ten minutes, chanting the words So Hum over and over. She had learned this particular Sanskrit mantra at yoga. At the end of the class, her teacher would have them all lie on their backs in Corpse pose. She would have them close their eyes and repeat “So Hum” for five straight minutes. The first time the teacher had suggested this, Gabrielle had practically rolled her closed eyes. But then, somewhere around minute two or three, she began to feel the toxins of stress drain from her body. “So

The yogis say you can never step into the same river twice, because the current is always shifting and changing. You've never stepped into this exact river before today. Not with this body, not with today's particular energy, with the specific number of bites of breakfast in your belly, with the earth tipped on its axis. Perhaps up until now you haven't had a breakthrough in this pose, but that was then. What's possible today?

If you ask an average yoga teacher what yoga is, you usually get a little talk on “union” and how the practice is five thousand years old. They may have some poses and sequences of poses that they practice and teach, along with some information on breathing and meditation. Where did they get this information and these practices, and what relationship do they have with the great river of yoga knowledge and techniques? Without much more than an ounce of questioning we have acquired so much misinformation on yoga from our teachers. It is easy to hand down these myths and stories that twist and turn from their original form and meaning, and often lead us away from the essence of a specific lesson or practice.

Part 1: Readiness and Reminders Choose a place where you’ll feel comfortable and are unlikely to be disturbed. Get your props ready, shut the door, dim the lights, and turn off the phone or whatever else might be distracting. Relaxation Pose (Shavasana) Stretch yourself out on a thick blanket or mat on the floor. Either close your eyes or keep them slightly open… To help you relax your hips and legs, try letting your heels be about two feet apart. It’s fine to make your own adjustments so that your legs and hips feel comfortable and at ease… Allow your feet and toes to rest out to the sides, and let go… Now, bring your attention to your hips… Notice how the weight of your hips is resting on the ground… If it feels uneven, lift them up slightly, then settle back down until it feels even and balanced on both sides. Shift your attention to your shoulders. Feel the placement of your shoulders, exactly where they are… You’re invited to move your shoulders down from your ears and tuck your shoulder blades under for more support. Have your arms out to each side with your palms up. Settle the very back of your head on the floor or thin cushion and tuck your chin so that it’s slightly lower than your forehead. Adjust your hair if it’s in the way. Make sure that your head and neck are nicely aligned with your spine. Feel free to adjust your clothing and props, making sure that every part of your body feels as steady and comfortable as possible. Remind yourself to let the yoga nidra process happen naturally by being openly aware. It’s common to tune out while feeling deeply quiet and at ease while vaguely aware of what’s happening outside. Return your attention to the guiding instructions if you get distracted unnecessarily. Go ahead and add your own personal reminders for keeping on track and having a more meaningful time. Say it positively and in the present tense. Please take a big breath in through your nose and sigh it out through your mouth… Feel free to breathe in and sigh out a few more times.

Baddha Konasana: Butterfly Pose Come to a seated position on your mat and bring the soles of your feet together to touch, your knees bent. Grab your ankles and inhale, lengthening the spine. Exhale; forward bend over your legs for Baddha Konasana, Butterfly Pose. While doing the physical pose, have the intention of practicing Bhakti Yoga. Connect to the devotion within you by seeing the divinity in yourself and around you. As you bow your head, imagine yourself offering up your practice to something higher and to that divinity. Find some humility in your heart while holding the pose for 10 breaths.

Asana PHYSICAL POSTURE MEANING Asana, the physical practice, translates to “seat of consciousness,” but it is generally the word used to say “pose.” Strike an asana! SIGNIFICANCE Asanas are for a healthy body, but because the physical body is waking up, becoming alert and healthy through the poses, asanas can awaken the other facets of Yoga within us.

Each pose tends to have a specific drishti point associated with that pose. When in doubt, your default drishti point is a few feet beyond the tip of your nose diagonally downward.

It isn’t clear to me why they want to improve their posture. We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming. Sometimes I go with my wife to the church basement and watch her stand, turn, assume various heroic poses, gesture gracefully. She makes references to yoga, kendo, trance-walking. She talks of Sufi dervishes, Sherpa mountaineers. The old folks nod and listen. Nothing is foreign, nothing too remote to apply. I am always surprised at their acceptance and trust, the sweetness of their belief. Nothing is too doubtful to be of use to them as they seek to redeem their bodies from a lifetime of bad posture. It is the end of skepticism. We walked home under a marigold moon.

Yoga engages both the mind and body by combining the regulatory power of our breath with movement. As we advance in the practice, increasingly challenging poses begin to test our body’s physical limits, further stressing our system, and offering an opportunity to reconnect with the calming power of our breath.

Yoga: once an exotic rite for mystics, now a suburban hobby in church halls and gymnasiums. Stretches, belly breaths and chants. Ancient (and awkward) poses with odd animal names, enjoyed by Lycra-clad mothers and post-matcha tea hipsters alike.

As the scholar Mark Singleton writes, from the fifteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century

We were just…playing a game. Twister. You know, with the colorful dots and weird yoga poses? Crazy fun.” “Twister?” My frown deepens. “I assumed you were having sex.” Gabe’s mouth shapes into an O as his eyebrows raise, his feet shuffling back and forth like he’s uncomfortable. “Right. We did that, too. After Twister.

But please know: often it’s the classes that we feel were most underwhelming that land most deeply with our students.

¿Cómo son estas tres energías básicas de la naturaleza? Sattva, simbolizado por el color blanco, posee cualidades como la transparencia, la luminosidad, la claridad, la ligereza, el conocimiento, el movimiento ascendente, la felicidad y la bondad. Rajas, simbolizado por el color rojo, posee cualidades como la movilidad, la actividad, el estímulo, el esfuerzo, la fuerza, la expansión horizontal, el deseo, la pasión, el dolor y la enfermedad. Tamas, simbolizado por el color negro, posee cualidades como la pesadez, la solidez, la oscuridad, la indiferencia, la negligencia, el movimiento descendente, la ofuscación, la embriaguez, el sueño y la inconsciencia. Como veremos más adelante, la práctica del yoga es de dos tipos. El primero es una purificación de la mente mediante la obstrucción de rajas y tamas; en este caso, la mente tiene que quedar llena de sattva, de claridad y transparencia. El segundo tipo conduce al cese de la mente, y no solo a su purificación. Esto se consigue mediante la supresión del mismo guṇa sattva, que en definitiva no deja de ser material igual que rajas y tamas. La renuncia a la transparencia de la materia es la renuncia más grande y solo es posible mediante el desapego supremo

Tight internal rotators cause the hands to slide inward. Counter this tendency by preparing the shoulders with stretches such as Gomukhasana and Garudasana arms prior to taking the pose. Remember that the shoulder is actually a combination of several joints. Use this knowledge to strategize how to obtain the optimal position of the pose. For example, protract the shoulder blades (move them away from the midline of the spine) to allow the elbows to adduct, or move inward. Protracting

The asana practice is extremely powerful and unique in design. In addition to improved flexibility, circulation, muscular strength and increased energy, and detoxification of the organs, each pose unblocks life force energy (prana) pathways in your body, reprograms your cellular DNA and connects us to our spiritual origin.

Our anxieties were driving us to become other people—he was Earner; I was Mother, like characters in some phenomenally boring Ionesco play.

Kaleidoscope Yoga: The universal heart and the individual self. We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form. A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other’s alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that’s for everyone to enjoy... Coming into a practice and an energy field of community yoga over and over, is a practice of returning, again and again, to the present moment, to the person in front of you, to the people around you, to your body, to others’ bodies, to your energy, to others’ energy, to your breath, to others’ breath. [...] community yoga practice can help us, in a very real, practical, grounded, felt, somatic way, to identify and be in harmony with all that is around us, which includes all of our fellow human beings.
 We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals. And to the extent that we practice this, somatically, we become more and more comfortable and fluid with this larger, more cosmic, more inter-related reality. We see and feel and breathe ourselves, more and more, as the open movement of energy, as open somatic possibility. As energy and breath. This is one of the many benefits of a community yoga practice. Kaleidoscope shows us, in a very practical way, how to allow universal patterns of wisdom and interconnectedness to filter through us. [...] One of the most interesting paradoxes I have encountered during my involvement with the community yoga project (and it is one that I have felt again and again, too many times to count) is the paradox that many of the most infinite, universal forms have come to me in a place of absolute solitude, silence, deep aloneness or meditation. And, similarly, conversely and complimentarily, (best not to get stuck on the words) I have often found myself in the midst of a huge crowd or group of people of seamlessly flowing forms, and felt simultaneously, in addition to the group energy, the group shape, and the group awareness, myself as a very cleanly and clearly defined, very particular, individual self. These moments and discoveries and journeys of group awareness, in addition to the sense of cosmic expansion, have also clarified more strongly my sense of a very specific, rooted, personal self. The more deeply I dive into the universal heart, the more clearly I see my own place in it. And the more deeply I tune in and connect with my own true personal self, the more open and available I am to a larger, more universal self. We are both, universal heart and universal self. Individual heart and individual self. We are, or have the capacity for, or however you choose to put it, simultaneous layers of awareness. Learning to feel and navigate and mediate between these different kinds and layers of awareness is one of the great joys of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga, and of life in general. Come join us, and see what that feels like, in your body, again and again. From the Preface of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga: The Art of Connecting: The First 108 Poses

We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals.

Yoga has taught me that a fundamental principle of life is that energy follows intention. When we create a strong intention and really believe in it, the world magically seeks to support us.