Whether we are practicing or teaching yoga, what sets the physical aspects aside from mere exercise is the quality of attention that we bring to focus. The mindful attitude that brings us towards embodiment – inviting our mind to where our body resides in the present moment – allows us to fully tune in and gauge appropriate response. This ‘listening and responding’ is the basis of a meditative practice, and the route to registering safety through our whole system as the nervous system can settle. As in Patanjali’s Sutra 1:2 “…stilling the fluctuations of the mind”.
The importance of the pause
Within practice, we can slow down to truly feel the experience – yoga as ‘moving meditation’ – and also punctuate movement with places of pause, where we allow processing through tissues and integration of experience. Within the heightened input of information from the ‘doing’ of movement, points of stillness...