Hillary's Yoga Practice Podcast

The yoga of Patanjali offers us Yoga Sutras including the 8 limbs of yoga. Within these 8 limbs are the Yamas (social inter-action with others) and Niyamas (inter-action we have with ourselves). There are 5 Yamas and 5 Niyamas making them kinda like the 10 commandments of Yoga. For this class I focused on 3 of the Niyamas - Tapas (effort), Svadhyaya (self-study) , and Ishvara Pranidhana (surrender to the divine). In life we mostly do, effort and forget to feel the connection to something bigger - when we take time to reflect or study we can see where we are with both. In yoga effort is important to get to the mat keep your arms strong in down dog but to leave space to soften even surrender to this greater energy. Through self-study on and off the mat using scriptures or any books that take you deeper one can see there tendency and make a choice to see balance of these actions. Sanskrit: Chin mudra or Om mudra Sequence Level 2 : Downward facing dog with split and twist Straight leg lunge Down