You can read anywhere about the studies that show that you will sleep better, feel better, be more productive and focused, and so on, if you start a regular yoga practice.

So I don't need to go into that here. It's well established in both ancient yogic texts and recent Western science what the benefits are. We reap huge physical and psychological and emotional benefits when we breathe and move mindfully every day.

Each and every time you practice yoga, you bring awareness to areas of body and mind that were previously unconscious. Asleep.

In a physical sense, this may mean becoming more aware of rotating your upper arms or stretching the muscles between your ribs as you inhale. Mentally and emotionally, this may mean becoming aware of how you deal
with situations, as you watch yourself
become frustrated or forceful or scared
while learning a new yoga posture and
realize that you have the same reaction
in other situations.

As you become more aware, you can decide which areas you want to change and which you wish to sustain.

Yoga encourages you to study yourself,
challenge yourself, and accept yourself.
My intention, as a teacher, is to offer an
opportunity for some of each of these
things to happen.

To do this, I sequence each class to build strength and flexibility gradually as we work toward more challenging postures. I choose words carefully to be both clear and concise in guiding students through their practices, and I supplement these verbal cues with physical adjustments and assistance.

Throughout each class, I adjust my sequence and cueing to adapt to the needs of the students in that particular room at that particular time, providing suggestions for how to modify the postures or intensify them.

I encourage students to stay with the breath cues, listening to their breathing to gauge where to go next with the class. When the breathing stays steady through both "easy" and "difficult" sections, I know we are focused and centered.

With beginning students, I will demonstrate postures when students need a visual idea of them. However, when I work with students who have been practicing regularly, I rarely demonstrate; I encourage them to listen --rather than look.

This enables people to stay centered in an awareness of how their own bodies feel, rather than focusing on how someone else appears.

I don't want to get too deeply into it here, but for those of you who care, here's why I think this matters: The shape of one body is so simple and unified when looked at from the outside, yet our internal experiences are complex, layered, and sometimes contradictory. If we can immerse ourselves in our experience of the present moment--that is, how this feels on the inside--then we can start to observe the interrelations of what seems to be "inside" and what seems to be "outside" -- rather than always seeing these as separate and comparing other people's "outsides" to our own "inside."

Analysis and comparison are useful in some cases, but when they are chronic, habitual, and inescapable processes, then we are stuck in a world of separation. The practices of yoga can take us beyond those surface borders.

To encourage students to immerse themselves in each moment's breath, I use verbal instruction, physical adjustments, music, and philosophy, combining these elements to create a class that offers both difficulty and ease for each student.

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time
and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated
from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by
widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for
such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation..."
     --attributed to Albert Einstein in Howard Eves’ Mathematical Circles Adieu