1. Your Practice is about you.
Come as you are, start from where you are
Yoga is fundamentally a personal practice. While there is much information that can teach you its philosophy, guidelines, and principles, you learn yoga from your own body, starting from the moment you step onto your mat, and connect with your awareness and breathing.
Yoga is path for arriving in this present moment. It is a means of waking up from our inner consciousness, so that we can remember all that we already know. It is a way of remembering our true nature, which is essentially joyful and peaceful. Developed as a pragmatic science by ancient seers centuries ago, yoga is a practice that any person, regardless of age, sex, race, or religious belief, can use to realize her full potential. It is a means of staying in intimate communication with the formative core matrix of yourself and those forces that serve to bind all living beings together. As you establish and sustain this intimate connection, this state of equanimity becomes the core of your experience rather than the rare exception.
Through observing nature and through intense self-observation and inquiry, the ancient yogis were able to codify the conditions that must be present for realizing our intrinsic wholeness. Although such realization can occur spontaneously, more often than not it is the result of a sustained commitment to practice over a lifetime.
In my personal experience, most yoga classes move through poses far too quickly and do not allow the student really “sense and feel” the pose that they are in. This makes for slower progress in the long run, as speed can allow bad habits to form, and you can miss the moment that comes when alignment falls into place. Muscles and connective tissue take time to release. In your home practice, take as much time as you need to find your center and develop your ease in the pose. Often that takes longer than you think. If possible, wait until you feel the pose happening by itself- an internal letting go that takes you to a deeper level. If you are in too much discomfort to remain in the pose for more than a few moments, then stay back a bit and take it to a milder level. Deep, effortless breathing is a good sign that you are there.
Everyone’s body and abilities are different. Just as it is in a yoga class, what may be too short a time for one person to hold a pose is already way too long for another. The idea of yoga is to find your center, your stability, and your ease, as you are in the moment. Pushing yourself to hold a pose when you are suffering or move too fast to really feel the pose negates the deeper purpose of yoga. That purpose is not performance but increased body consciousness, and greater strength from within.
