I believe I was taught this lesson by Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, or maybe my teacher Luke Ketterhagen. I’m not sure of the orgin, but I can say I have these five things written down on an index card, and I refer to them all the time.

In my classes, I’ll often recite them, usually when people are in a very demanding or very easy pose—the best times for reflection and awareness!

These are kind of in order. Or I would say the first three go together and the second two go together.

1. Intention

   You often hear yoga teachers open class with asking people to set an intention. That’s because yoga is different than other exercise. A good yoga class includes a meditation and some breathing, but it’s not the end; these are means to an end. We practice for a reason and that reason can be varied. Your “intention” can be a motivating word or phrase, an affirmation, something you want to embody or call into your life. It can be a hope or a wish. When I’m teaching kids I ask them to think of their most personal wish, something that is theirs and theirs alone, something they never have to tell anyone, but of course they can if they want to. Or, you can make your practice a dedication—almost a form of prayer—if you know someone who is suffering in some way.

2. Focus

   This is similar to intention, but different. Focus is continual through the practice, and it shifts again and again and again. Focus on this body part or this kind of breathing, Focus on the alignment in a pose, or the quality of your attention. Pretty soon, if your focus is sustained, you’ll notice that whatever problems you might have been preoccupied with dissipate. So focus is a way of centering the mind during practice. The idea is that, with practice, your focus will improve in all areas of your life. So in this way, an asana (pose) practice is not just for the body, but also the mind.

3. Knowledge

   I love this one, because it’s so broad. It can mean knowledge of your body, your mood, anatomy, philosophy, mythology, yogic literature, physics. You see, “yoga” is a very very broad terms that includes all of these. Quite often when we’re going through class we might invoke several of these at once. For example, I often emphasize the western science of pathophysiology when I explain why breathing into the belly is so calming. It stimulates the vagus nerve, which triggers our parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). At the same time, there is an ancient tradition of agna, or fire, associated with the belly, or maybe I’ll mention how the kundalini tradition envisioned a serpent at the base of our spine that, with practice, energetically lifts and distributes shakti, a sort of life force, throughout the body.

4. Experimentation

   You MUST engage with this one. You have to play a little. When a teacher says “try” something or suggests an alternate way of being in the pose, check it out, even if it seems too easy or hard, just break your pattern a little. For example, in standing splits pose (Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana if you want the sanskrit name), I’ll encourage people to “experiment” with balance, by first taking one hand being the ankle, and maybe even two. I feel like every pose has wide potential for meaningful experiments.

5. Effortless effort

   Sometimes I’ll say this, “effortless effort,” and then say, “this just means going to your edge, looking over the edge, and then backing away from the edge.” We want to find the sweet spot in every pose. And this one can be combined with some of the others too For example if you’re in a forward bend like janu sirsasana (seated with one foot on the upper inner thigh of the opposite leg), you might be focusing hard, with an intention of “staying in breath,” and the full knowledge of how, if you flex your quad, your hamstring will relax a little, and then try an experiment like using a strap, and then, with awareness, and if you’re feeling good, you might go a little further than you usually go in the pose, but back off immediately when sensation turns into pain (that’s a subject for another post!) and settle into an “effortless effort” expression of the pose.

Looking back at these, can you see that these five practices are not only good for your yoga, but might be applied to life as well? Yoga is like that.