The EIGHT Limbs of yoga - asana
There is thins huge misconception that Asana is Yoga. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Yoga is such a vast system in which Asana is a tiny part of. In saying that, it’s still an important piece of the journey. I myself and everyone I know was initially drawn to Yoga through the physicality.
The body is basically a material memory bank, storing all of our past choices, what we have done, what we have been thinking about and what we have been ingesting both in regards to food and mental content. Emotional and physiological stress is collected by the body and shows up as
resistance and stuck-ness in our Asana practice. During times of greater mental ease, when we are in love, or feeling really successful, the body responds by opening and our Asana practice becomes more freeing and easeful. Asana practice primarily transforms our body's response to past experiences.
Asana becomes supremely effective when we understand how different spinal orientations (pose categories) affect the mind and the body's energetic systems, both subtle and gross. If we don't know this information, then our Yoga practice will lack precision and specific dependable outcomes. Essentially we’ll be you guessing and going for the best.