On many days you lay out your yoga mat, sit on it, breath trying to grab the centre, stand up, chant the invocation, start with Surya Namaskara A and… your mind is already somewhere else! To the office work waiting ahead, to your next errand, to your beloved ones, to that very important thing waiting for you to be finished with your asana practice.

present

On other days – hopefully a very few ones – you wake up with a pain somewhere in your physical body coming from a previous practice, from an unexpected movement, sometimes from somewhere you can’t even tell but still you won’t give up your asana practice. Than you start as usual: lay out your yoga mat, sit on it, breath trying to grab the centre, stand up, chant the invocation, start with Surya Namaskara A and… your mind is still there, fully present, fully awake! You’re conscious of each and every movement, you listen to every single part of your body trying to guess till where you can go, you are conscious that any inadvertent movement can cause you pain… and in all that, mind sticks to the body, sticks to the present!

And… surprise! Many times that practice is the most rewarding one: it goes beyond flexibility, beyond physical strength, beyond the desire of achieving the next asana and it comes to another layer, the one of being present, the one of yoga.