The way each of us connects with yoga will be different but profound. Whatever your reason to practice yoga might be, the real intention of yoga lies in becoming free, whole and alive at the same time.

For me, it is to stand on a yoga mat with absolute awareness of breath and body. It is to feel the gross physical weight of the body through my feet and to be open to what is going to happen next.

Waking up to yoga is when you stop looking for anything, any gain or any reason, where awareness is the practice itself.  This process of awakening is called yoga.

Wake up to the breath

Breath is what ties us to the present.  Focusing on the breath allows the mind to be in the present moment.

Most of the ancient yoga or meditative traditions focus on the breath as a tool for their contemplation.

‘I see me, I see my breath.’

when I say ‘my breath’, I am associating the breath to be mine. When in reality, breath is just breath. Once you stop identifying it to be your’s, our sense of separation will go away. You will wake up in a space where your previous notion of breath falls away. You are no longer what you identified yourself with. You don’t just breath, you become breathing.  

Each time you breathe you are entering life. You are creating ways to see yourself and the world clearly by letting go of the identity of who you are.

It can take years to come to the awareness of identifying breath as just breath. The key is to practice focusing on the breath until it becomes a rhythm through which the experience of yoga unfolds.