With the explosion of Yoga around the world these days, more and more students are coming to realize that what happens on the mat is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Yoga has to offer. Yes, of course, Yoga postures benefit the physical body in multiple ways, making us stronger and leaner, stretching us and helping us breathe and sleep better. These improvements are often tangible and very vivid. But what if all the opening and strengthening could also happen to your mind? What if your mind could be as powerful and flexible as your muscles? I’m here to say it can be, and will use this blog to introduce some very basic Yogic principles that can serve as guide posts in the Yoga of daily life. Whether or not you already practice Yoga, or are just curious about it, I’d like to suggest that having some kind of a consistent and thoughtful practice will not only make you feel better physically, but can also become a vehicle for transformation in every aspect of your life. 
It can dramatically shift the way you see yourself and your relationships, as well as the kind of footprint you leave on the planet. What is really exciting and to me, compelling, about the Yogic path, is that it is not a series of edicts. It’s a worldview that asks you to be conscious and aware in all your choices, and provides a frame of reference to help you think about who you are and how you behave.
So how does this actually work? In this blog I’ll be sharing some of the ways you can incorporate fundamental Yogic ideas into your daily life, so you can practice Yoga in all your affairs, whether or not you actually go to class or roll out a mat in your living room. That said, I passionately believe that for many of us, the time we spend doing poses provides invaluable lessons about who we are and what our patterns are, and that this time on the mat can therefore have a tremendous impact in terms of speeding up the process of self-knowledge that will help us be the people we want to be off the mat. Through the physical practice of Yoga postures (the Yogis call this asana) we learn to pay attention to breath and alignment (the placement of our limbs and the subtle muscular actions that support this placement). Over time, this ability to actually be in the present moment, learning to accurately observe and perceive the physical body, has a huge effect upon our brains. We learn to be more fully located in the here and now (rather than obsessing about the past or trying to predict the future) and we develop the ability to focus on what’s actually happening in ways that can be quite revolutionary. Ask yourself, how often do you actually think about just one thing, and when you do, how powerful is that??!! Most of us are so scattered and hectic in our thinking that it is challenging to stick to any kind of a program. We want to eat better, exercise more and waste less, but we are constantly distracted by everything around us persuading us to spend more and believe that consumption will make us feel better.
How do we resist these siren calls? Through Yoga; through developing what the Yogis call eka grata or one-pointed focus, the ability to direct the mind on the matter at hand and not be endlessly sidetracked by everything that takes you away from the real you, the you who knows, deep inside exactly how to live a thoughtful, conscious and healthy life. For me, the Yoga mat is where I first learned this ability to focus and to observe more accurately, so that I can then act more skillfully. This to me is the essence of Yoga, both on the mat and off. So whether you already practice poses, or have been thinking about it but just haven’t gotten there yet, the next time you do get on the mat, be as interested as you possibly can be in what your actual experience is, not what you wish was happening, not what is happening to the person next to you, not what happened last week. Revel in the present moment and learn everything you can about it, and in the process, about yourself. This focus and self-knowledge will serve you the next time you go to the market or receive an email telling you to buy something you may or may not need – not by suddenly turning you into a deprived ascetic, but by helping you to make the choices that are more reflective of who you really are. Because when you know who you really are, you are less susceptible to all the messages telling you who and what you aren’t. Cultivating one-pointed focus, in other words, allows you to pay attention to what really matters and this is how we change the world, one choice at a time.
So well put…exactly how I feel, exactly what I am.