The Reflection of Our Mind

Over the past two weeks I have been introducing the importance of moving with the breath during our āsana practice.  The importance of the breath focus becomes apparent the more you practice yoga āsana in this way, and for me, it became more apparent when I developed a personal home practice.  The experience of practicing āsana layered with the knowledge I learnt during my teacher training is part of the reason I am so passionate about Yoga.  Let’s investigate why we focus on the breath in class.

Xavier helping me write Week Three's practice...perhaps he's in a deep meditation??

T.K.V. Desikachar is the son of Tirumalai Krishnamacharya who was an Acarya that passed on this understanding of Yoga to many students including his son.  Desikachar has written a beautiful book called The Heart of Yoga and in this he writes “Although it theoretically appears possible for the body, breath and mind to work independent of one another, the purpose of yoga is to unify their actions” (Desikachar, 1995).  Okay, but why?  Quite simply “The quality of our breath is extremely important because it expresses our inner feelings…The breath is the link between the inner and outer body.”  And as we will begin to discover, yoga is much more than āsana, yoga is a system which helps us to understand life.

This is why the starting point of our yoga practice begins with linking the breath and the body.  To do this effectively we anchor the mind to the breath and ask the mind to follow the breath during the movement – this is the whole basis of āsana practice (Desikachar, 1995).  We find the rhythm of our breath at the beginning of class and continuously watch the breath throughout the practice.  Coordinating body & breath requires a lot of attention from the mind and begins to teach the mind to focus on a single point without distraction.  Enter meditation – by “consciously following the breath…we become one with the movement” (Desikachar, 1995). 

The breath is therefore your reference point throughout your āsana practice.  If the quality of the breath changes from a gentle, quiet, smooth, subtle flow we have disconnected from the body and are no longer practicing yoga.  Keeping the mind connected to the breath and observing without judgment is the art of practicing yoga.

So join me this coming Tuesday for Week Three of the Mums and Bubs class at Bikram Yoga Kawana 11am.  We will be further exploring the connection of the breath to our movement and finishing class with a relaxation reflecting on the quality and aspects of the breath.  Continue practicing at home with the practice below.

I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Desikachar:

“However beautifully we carry out an āsana, however flexible our body may be, if we do not achieve the integration of body, breath, and mind we can hardly claim that what we are doing is yoga.  What is yoga after all?  It is something that we experience inside, deep within our being.  Yoga is not an external experience.  In yoga we try in every action to be as attentive as possible to everything we do.  Yoga is different from dance or theatre.  In yoga we are not creating something for others to look at.  As we perform the various āsana-s we observe what we are doing and how we are doing it.  We do it only for ourselves.  We are both observer and what is being observed at the same time.  If we do not pay attention to ourselves in our practice, then we cannot call it yoga” (Desikachar, 1995).

Desikachar, T. K. V. (1995). The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice. Vermont, United States: Inner Traditions International.