The goal of yoga is not perfecting mindfulness or levitating yourself into a meditating pretzel, but rather, creating an enlarged awareness of your bodily sensations.

Enlivening and engaging muscles you didn’t know you had. Noticing and naming feelings you didn’t realize were there. Witnessing and respecting thoughts you aren’t comfortable with.

Each of these experiences gives you power to push to new heights of awareness. That’s how you know the yoga is working.

Not just when you start touching your head to your knee, but also when you stop bristling with impatient toward life’s trivial irritants.

Not just when you learn to flex your inner thigh muscle to balance, but also when you take your anger and productively put it into your legs instead of eating three slices of pizza in five minutes.

That’s awareness. It’s the state of consciousness that doesn’t allow you to stay trapped in the slavery of reaction.

It’s the muscle that gives you the power to step out of frustrating patterns and into renewal.

How are you creating an enlarged awareness of your bodily sensations?