Breathing in Consciousness

Part of the beauty of yoga asana practice is that each and every different asana highlights tension and other sensation in the body. Paying closer attention, we also come to detect how the different asanas stimulate different emotional and mental reactions; a certain posture done in a particular way, time, or other circumstance tends to generate its own somewhat unique effects on the mind. Each asana also tends to affect the breath in different ways, however subtle the differences may be. Staying with the breath as we feel it in the body, wecome to realize that we can breathe into the body in conscious ways, consciously directing the breath to places of tension or holding, and in this come to experience from inside how the breath transforms bodily sensation, emotional feeling, and mental awareness.