How I Practice

I've been working to deepen my yoga practice - to make it more intentional and attentive.  I am proficient at may postures at a superficial level, but how to intensify and deepen the practice?

Here's the method I'm using.  It is based on basic ideas, such as -

• every pose has grounding energy from the force of gravity pulling straight into the earth
• every pose has lengthening or extending away from, but supported by, that grounding energy
• most every pose has one or more joints that move as I enter or exit the pose - for example, in the standing poses with bent front leg, three joints move together as the leg bends - the ankle, knee and hip
• lengthening can be taken to a sensation of stretch
• breath is involved in every pose
• healthy movement involves a little movement in a lot of places, rather than a lot of movement in one place*

My goal is to be in the pose with equal and broad awareness of my whole presence.  

1. I start by awareness of the breath, even and energized.
2. Maintaining awareness of the breath, especially to notice it changing, I bring attention to the grounding energy.  For a standing pose, I look for equal support through both legs.  When the legs are doing different things, this isn't always easy.  
3. Once I have the solid foundation, I turn attention to the form of the pose and to extension, while, and this is key, also maintaining awareness of the even, stable, grounding energy and the breath.

This immediately changed my practice, because it is so easy, in almost every pose, to find an edge somewhere that is imbalanced.  Perhaps it is a particularly intense stretch in one muscle, or a position that causes my breath to become difficult or cramped, or a challenging balance.  Suddenly, 90+ percent of my attention is on that one thing, and I've lost connection with the rest of the pose.  

Realizing that yoga is really in the expanded awareness of the full experience, my practice now is to avoid those "too hard" edges, so that the most intense part of the experience remains in relative balance with the rest, and I can maintain my awareness of the whole.

 

* this one in particular I credit to master yoga teacher Leslie Kaminoff.  Several of the other ideas trace more generally to him.