When I first started practicing yoga, the majority of my thoughts during class were focused on making sure my expression of the postures was as close to textbook (i.e. Yoga Journal) as possible. It was hard enough trying to decipher which pose blah-blah-blah-asana was, but then attempting to align everything from my toes to the crown of my head was enough to send my thoughts spinning. I’m not sure if it was several months or several years later, but eventually the postures became familiar, the yogic breath became a habit, and my practice became much more fluid. I cared less about how the poses looked and more about how they felt, and with that my expression of the postures changed.

When I practice now, I try to let my thoughts rest exclusively on my breath in order that the poses may become an expression of what my mind, heart, and physical body need. Some days I find stillness in the postures helps to ground me while other days I want to play, trying new variations and flowing dynamically. By staying present with each moment of your practice, you will discover which expression makes the most sense for you at that exact point in time. In this way, your yoga will more fully meet the changing needs of your mind-body-heart, keeping your physical body safe, your mind steady, and your heart happy. –Michelle Laxton

Sometimes when my yoga practice feels stale and I need a resurgence of that je ne sais qua to reinvigorate my flow, I watch a video clip of Seane Corn demonstrating yoga as body prayer. Seane Corn is known around the world as a talented teacher and practitioner of Vinyasa Yoga as well as Karma Yoga. While I’ve never attended one of her workshops or taken her classes, her energy as a yogini reaches me all the same through the net.  

In this short You Tube clip, Seane demonstrates just one round of Surya Namaskar/Sun Salutation B. The asanas and sequencing are familiar, but the beauty and intensity of her flow is always powerful enough to re-awaken my passion for yoga. It’s easy to move from posture to posture while letting the mind run wild. For me, the real work is presence: staying connected to each asana and ensuring that my movements are a reflection of my intention. This is a practice that will never get stale, but will continue to challenge, teach, and inspire me. –Michelle Laxton

Seane Corne Demonstrating Yoga as Body Prayer

I may be living in the 21st century with all of its norms and social patterns of accepted behavior but many dimensions of me might as well be a caveman wandering through the dark forest in search of food and comfort.
My instincts and emotions are like a machine that runs on certain specific data that was programmed in thousands of years ago.
Much of our mind is dwelling in the dark forests of the past. The mind is chemicals that have changed little in thousands of years.
An interesting thing about the mind is that it fixates on what it wants and any variation from the specifics identified meets with a lot of resistance. Sri Chinmoy in one of his book Everest Aspiration expresses this very well: “We want to possess [a particular thing], but if one thing more or one thing less than what we wanted comes, we are not satisfied because human desire is so limited that we want the thing exactly the way our mind has conceived it.” This attribute of the mind is great when it comes to survival but runs us into plenty of trouble if it is our guiding principle through life.

As I meditated upon this idea it occurred to me that the reason for this goes back to the need for specificity when it comes to survival. Once an animal identifies a specific thing needed for survival, or a specific thing to avoid for survival, then it is imperative that the animal be sure to hone in and stay focused on that exact thing. The red berry can keep you alive, the blue on will kill you.

A child who is having a “temper tantrum” will often reject all offerings because the exact thing that they wanted was not given to them. They wanted the orange two-sticked popsicle and NOTHING else will suffice. And even that will now not suffice for they did not get it WHEN they wanted it. So it is not just WHAT but WHEN that affects the animals existence and hence our desires.

Welcome to the past!