yoga<\/em>?\u201d You might find yourself sitting on the floor with a blanket under your hips or in a chair doing a simple spinal twist and hear the teacher\u2019s voice ask this very question. The answer is simple. You are doing yoga because you are focusing and paying attention. In yoga, we are always working toward being in a kind of meditative state, that is we are directing our attention in a specific way to a specific point of focus. This point of focus may be our breath or sensations that are arising in our body or even a visual point of focus\u2014which is especially helpful when practicing balancing poses.<\/p>\nWhat happens then when our attention is drawn away, when we get distracted? Are we still practicing yoga? Of course! As mentioned earlier, meditation is just one aspect of a full yoga practice. In the yoga world, we call this one of the \u201ceight limbs\u201d of yoga. Yoga poses are another limb, so is working with our breath, and quieting our senses. The limb or stage that comes just before meditation is developing concentration. The longer we are able to focus our attention the closer we come to meditation. We might start with just a few seconds, then work slowly to a few minutes. Our yoga posture practice soon becomes a moving meditation. There is no rush, and there is no end goal. This process is a journey, with many benefits along the way: pain and stress relief, flexibility and stability, a slower heart rate, and decrease in blood pressure to mention just a few.<\/p>\n
If you are considering beginning a yoga and meditation practice, be sure to talk to a qualified teacher. Let them know what your concerns and expectations are, and ask for guidance as to what level of class you might start with. Yoga is a practice for everybody. And with the correct guidance you\u2019ll not only keep your body safe, you\u2019ll also find that as you learn to pay attention while on<\/em> the yoga mat, you’ll\u00a0begin to pay more attention while off<\/em> the yoga mat.<\/p>\nOriginally published in The Charlotte Sun: Feeling Fit, 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Jennifer French People often wonder what the difference between yoga and meditation is, believing that they are two separate practices. In truth, yoga has a long tradition that is thousands of years old and, originally, its main purpose in practice was to hone and develop meditative techniques. There was no separating the two. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[92,8,114],"tags":[245,31,43,335,58,64,279],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6018"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8265,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6018\/revisions\/8265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theyogasanctuary.biz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}