Taking your Yoga to a New Level

I am not a yogi. I am however an intuitive that senses and sees how energy flows through the body, mind and spirit. I have seen how energy flows work and how it can change your whole outlook on your yoga practice.

Even in my own yoga practice, I was just going through the motions of trying to do the poses right and connect with my peaceful self. It was only after I started co-hosting a yoga class, that I started to see exactly how each pose moved energy in the body and how that could be enhanced. This awareness has helped my own yoga practice as well. You can read my yoga instructor's view on inviting me to co-hosting here.

Awareness on the energy flow really helps you deepen your yoga practice and leaves you feeling balanced. Visualizing energy moving through your body is similar to training, where you are using a specific posture, visualization and intention to direct your body to its intended state of being. You are simply holding more intention for what you want to the yoga pose to bring to your body.

Cyndi Dale defines yoga in her Subtle body book as "Use of a combination of breathing exercises, postures, and meditations to balance mind, soul and body."

Steps to deepening your practice

To start:

• Set an intention for the practice every time.
• Request that all energy that isn't yours be returned to its owner.

During the practice:

• Listen to your body with your awareness and attention in each pose.
• Focus on what is working in each pose, not on what isn't.
• Notice patterns in practice and go deeper with its meaning by asking why.
• Celebrate yourself, don't shame yourself during practice.
• Listen for limiting beliefs and put them in check.

To close:

• Set the intention for how you want to feel the rest of the day.
• Surround yourself with some sort of protection, so you can hold on to the work that you have done.

When you decide to do something, be clear with yourself about why you are doing it. Just by clarifying why you are doing something, you bring more of that experience into the situation. Sometimes we kid ourselves into thinking we are doing something for one reason, when we find out later that isn't really why we do it. For example, you may work out to try and be healthy, but when you ask yourself why you are really doing it, it may to be more attractive. Good thing to know, especially if your actions are not lined up with your intentions. When you are doing your yoga practice, bring in the idea of mind, body, and spirit alignment and see how that shifts how you are connecting with the practice.

• Sanskrit meaning is union
• Formed as long as 10,000 years ago
• Roots across many cultures including Chinese, Indian and Mayan
• Works like acupressure to balance energy in the body

If the government is funding the research, you know it has gone mainstream. NCCAM is the U.S. federal government's national center for complementary and alternative medicine. Other countries have similar organizations.

Check out the NCCAM page on research for more information.

The mind-body connection in yoga is all about centering your thoughts around the practice. Allowing your body and your actions with your body to take you into a deeper relationship with yourself.

Even running on a treadmill can create this connection if you intend it to, but yoga has a unique ability to move your body in ways you wouldn't normally, to get you taking things deeper.

Bring your intentions into your yoga practice. Pay attention to more than where your leg is. Sense into what you feeling all over the body and celebrate yourself in every pose. Reap the rewards.