Asanas

PREFACE TO ESSENTIAL POSES

Over the years, many students have told me that they’d like to practice on their own but feel lost when attempting to begin. I decided to write my list of 50 poses that I feel are essential to a well-balanced yoga practice. My hope is that this list will function like a recipe book, providing you with a sense of direction and organization for a satisfying home practice. Just as a good recipe book allows room for creative variations, I hope that this list will inspire many different possibilities for a home practice that will deliver exactly the restoration that you need. Enjoy!

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“On the path of yoga, no effort is wasted, no gain is ever reversed; even a little of this practice will shelter you from great sorrow.”
-Bhagavad Gita 2.40

KEY THEMES AND APHORISMS FOR ALL POSES

(Note: I am completely indebted to my primary teachers, Richard Rosen and Rodney Yee, for any wisdom contained in the following guidelines. If anything seems to ring particularly true, it is surely something that they told me years ago. However, if anything seems unclear or false, I accept full responsibility for my lack of comprehension.)

Yoga is about balance, and balance is a fundamental human need.
Each pose is a balancing act between action and allowing.
Allowing, or ‘undoing,’ does not mean giving up or going limp.
You can always trace action, or the ‘doing’ component, back to how your body is contacting the ground.
Realize that while your habit will either be in the direction of excess tension or collapse, it is always a combination of the two.
Cultivate firmness without rigidity and relaxation without collapse.
Search for an appropriate amount of tension, and don’t let your sense of aliveness come solely from your effort.
Awareness brings economy of effort.
Do not try to be at peace. This is one of the quickest ways to agitation and disappointment. Practice dropping your inner resistance to the present moment and observing ‘what is.’
Balance is a condition, not a position. It’s far better to think in terms of trends and tendencies rather than fixed end points.
The pose is a pattern, not a place.
Center is a conversation, not a destination.
Although ‘hatha’ literally means ‘forceful,’ it’s better to think of it as meaning ‘full of the force.’
Skillful action is the right amount of force in the right place at the right time.
Especially while practicing challenging poses, remember the phrase “even distribution of the force.”
Do not force. Direct the flow of force.
Don’t deepen your pose at only one place; deepen the evenness of participation all over the place.
Practice non-violence in the midst of intense effort.
Keep coming back to your internal experience, especially how you are feeling (as distinct from what you are thinking about how you are feeling).
You bring your own habitual orientation to any situation. Thus, changing the external circumstances doesn’t do a whole lot of good.
Yoga is the restoration of a very ancient orientation.
You know you’re on the right track when you start to forget who you are (in the ordinary, conventional sense).
The spine needs to remember how to elongate itself. This is why we focus on grounding. Too much traction will stimulate a guarding response.
Don’t think of your physical body as something you have to hold onto or figure out how to move. This is like the centipede that becomes paralyzed with confusion when asked how it manages to walk. Keep thinking of directions in space.
Organize yourself downward; orient yourself upward.
First think of undoing, then doing. This will keep you in process mode rather than overly fixated on results.
The place where you feel the most sensation is always the place where there is a lack of balance. Then you must interpret whether that place either needs to deal with its tightness or weakness, OR whether you need to distribute the sensation to neighboring areas. OBSERVATION IS KEY
Deepen your observation; soften your determination.
Practice observing yourself without judgment.
Eventually you realize that you cannot change yourself because the person trying to do the changing is the same person who needs to be changed.
This practice is about cultivation, not a magical transformation.
The state of consciousness described as ‘liberation from the egotistical point of view’ has its correlate in the body.
Don’t forget that alignment is dynamic.
The key to understanding alignment is relationship – the way the body parts relate to each other and the way the body as a whole relates to gravity.
Keep your back body broad and your front body receptive.
Keep checking in with your jaw.
This is how energy is channeled: the outer body contains while the inner body expands.
Let the neck be free.
Stay awake in your feet.
Always come back to your back.
The legs represent inner security.
In a balanced body, the arms support and express the heart rather than defend and depress the heart.
Lead with your heart, not your head.
Gravity is the key to relaxation.
When in doubt, let the air out. Exhale – Pause – Inhale
Controlling the breath will always be met by a rebellion. Practice conscious relaxation, and let the breath be fluid and free.
Remember that the so-called separation between the mind and body is an obsolete conception of the human experience.
Let your practice spark an internal investigation into who you think you’re supposed to be.
Every now and then open your eyes and see the wonder. It’s right next to the sorrow.

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
-Mary Oliver

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