Sublime

More important than “mastering” Mūlabandha is the joyful, unending process of keeping the heart and mind connected and open for the moment compassion emerges in the form of Mūlabandha. This kind of practice is very advanced and profound, and it erases the subtext of ego striving.

But especially when you are off-kilter, you must practice carefully and with a sense of surrender, of not knowing, and of starting over again and again. When approached in this way, the practice will often smooth out imbalances, especially if you practice “all day every day.”

Yoga practice is about expanding and strengthening circuits in the mind-body that are less frequently used, and repatterning those that are inefficient.

There are many poses in the book that are not classical yoga postures; for example, many of the hamstring stretches. They are included because they are necessary steps in preparing your body to do the poses. You can’t do what you can’t do, so these stretches provide a way to get there. Besides, by doing these poses with attention to how you feel,

Patañjali describes āsana practice as a tool for liberating the kleṣa activities, and the Tantric traditions, most notably the Hatha Yoga Pradīpika, describe āsana as a means of liberating the practitioner by seeing the nonduality of mind and body.