❤Yoga practice is about Awareness❤

 ❤Yoga practice is about Awareness❤

Physical Awareness is important to keep every single practice safe and beneficial. Physical awareness can be a form of ease, relaxation, balanced sensation, space and length in your body or can be mild discomfort, strain, stretched sensation, warmth, coolness, heaviness or lightness, or imbalance between the left and the right or the front and back of your body.

Why do we do pranayama (or loosely translated as breath regulation) at the start of the lesson? 
Being one of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga (see the short intro on Ashtanga Yoga), pranayama centres your attention from a million thoughts to just one single activity, breath. This focus conserves energy running in all directions. By closing your eyes, you will save another over 20% of your energy by bringing your focus from external world to your inner world, your body, your breath... Breath is very subtle. To most people, it is an automatic process. To a yogini, it is one of the most important process because breath is life force, without which no life is possible... Breathing well bring about balance to your body and your mind. It brings good oxygen around the body, and expels waste from your body. With every single breath, you are nourishing your body... with every single breath, you are cleansing your body of waste... Breathe well and your body will thank you for that :D

Mountain pose, one of my favourite pose to share with my students, teaches one humility towards one's body. It looks like an easy or almost boring pose but this is so difficult to do as it requires full attention to bring about a sense of ease, lightness and balance to the body, to the spine. If one's mind is busy, it is even more challenging to do it as it appears that you are just standing there. Standing tall, standing neutral nourishes your spine and internal organs, bringing circulation where it is usually congested due to compression or blockages/ tightness in that area of your body. Circulation is important to bring nutrients to our organs and wastes away to be expelled from our body. This brings vitality and health to your body. Closing your eyes gently during mountain pose allows you to channel another 20% of your energy inwards towards bringing balance, vitality and health back to your spine :)

Awareness is key in every single practice to know how it is at that exact moment and what it needs. Awareness is learning and being open to whatever sensations you are feeling without judgement and expectations. Dropping expectation and judgement is crucial in restoring balance by doing what the body needs at that moment. 

Personally, yoga can be practised every moment, how you breathe, how you sit, stand or carry yourself. Do you tense up your body unnecessarily due to the mental or psychological stress? 

Pause, right here, and be aware. 

Om Shanti 🙏😌