The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
exhale. It sounds almost as if you were whispering the word ah with your lips closed. As we know, whispering can be intimate. When you’re close to someone, you don’t shout, and the ujjāyī breath has that same intimate quality, as if you were whispering to your beloved.
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
When you’re not practicing dṛṣṭi, the mind will establish a gazer (you) and then make up something (an individual field or object) to identify as separate and the object of the gaze. Once this separation starts, the process of wandering mind is triggered.
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
In the Yoga Sūtra, the kleśas are identified as the causes of suffering, all of them arising from the first, which is avidyā, or ignorance.
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
Svādhyāya can seem brutal—having to admit (to ourselves, no less) our shortcomings and mistakes and to stop covering up our imperfections. However, once we watch closely, looking past our presumptions, judgments, actions, and feelings, it is not harsh at all. A deeply satisfying feeling of living in alignment with ourselves, as if we’ve come home
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Through the integration of Prāṇa and citta, intelligent movement effortlessly manifests within this maze of conditions that arise, and we are slowly freed from preconditioned patterns that keep us both mentally and physically entangled.
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
Mudrā can have many meanings, including a seal, a mark, a ritualized gesture of joining together, or specific hand or finger positions used to focus the mind. In the context of this yoga practice, mudrā is the internal pattern that occurs within the body when a bandha is practiced flawlessly, and like bandhas, mudrās must be carefully, patiently
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Prāṇa links what you’re thinking and perceiving into its background. As embodied beings, all that we experience is processed through Prāṇa (breath) and citta (mind).
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
Symbolically, releasing the palate can be thought of as the act of allowing the nectar of compassion to penetrate every cell of your body.
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
The most appreciated gift for any yoga practitioner is, after all, more yoga!
Mary Taylor • The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga
But where subtle anatomy is most useful is in shedding light on levels of alignment and form that govern obscure aspects of the practice, such as Mūlabandha, and whole-body patterns that connect us from top to bottom. By practicing āsana with some of these patterns in the nervous system, the poses are enhanced, and perhaps more important, the affe
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