Where do I go during my yoga practice?

By Janya Wongsopa

This is a short essay I submitted to my mentor John Berg during my yoga teacher training at the Avalon Center in Palo Alto, Ca.

Where do I go during my yoga asana practice?

I go deeply inward. My whole body sensation and breath surface to the foreground and mental thoughts and sensory impressions fall to the background. My journey into Yoga is one of ease and at the same time intense focus. I often closed my eyes naturally as I take more steps inward. My body becomes a sacred space that expresses itself through flowing breaths and movements. It is a place of unity between me and that aspect of myself which is beyond names, shapes and forms.

Yoga asana is my creative expression through the body. I am an artistic being in that I cannot live without expressing myself fully in body, mind and spirit. When I see nature like a sunrise over an ocean I deeply feel the beauty of the scene because of my artistic appreciation for it. Bliss is that appreciation unbroken and unchanged by any scene. Yoga is my path of integrated self-expression yearning for that bliss.

In my asana practice I steadily perform the movements and deeply engaged with my breath. It is a model of how I live my life. I try to carry out my thoughts, words and deeds consciously while I move through life and relationships. Where I go in my yoga practice is where the essence of a moment is. It is simply being without dramas. I am just happy to be with myself without outside gratification. As I journey deeper into my yoga practice on a mat and in life, I become more established within my self.