The Art of Vinyasa: Awakening Body and Mind through the Practice of Ashtanga Yoga

We practice in an intelligent and disciplined manner in the service of truth. This ensures that the practices remain in the practical realm of relating to the world and other sentient beings in a joyful and unselfish way.

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.

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.

Compassion leads us to see clearly that since we are not separate from the fabric of the world, we are not truly liberated and happy until all beings are free.

some practitioners avoid the depth offered by the finishing poses, conceptualizing them as strictly therapeutic or restorative practices, which can create an imbalance toward an attachment to dissolution before there is actually anything to dissolve—in other words, before they have done the work. This can quickly become tamasic dullness in yoga. An

With time—possibly many years—we may realize that the awakening of this seed of reality is not something we can create but something we invite; we can simply do the work required to arrange things so that perhaps it arises again.

In so many situations in life, and certainly in yoga practice, you must have a full, devoted, and directed effort but, at the same time, an absolute sense of release without a hint of laziness or the abandonment of ideals or form.

In the language of yoga, this is the arising of sattva, or the harmonized, luminous state of intelligence that allows us to see things as they actually are. “Cleaning up” when taken literally, as in mopping the floor, or figuratively, as in improving our attitude, will often resolve ambiguous feelings of confusion or anxiety.

By practicing Brahmacarya, we cultivate respect for others and maintain the perspective of not knowing, not assuming, and not introducing ego (even in the form of preconceptions) into conclusions, behaviors, and all forms of relationships.