Breath, Bandha, Drishti...and the gift of remembering to begin again

I’m one of those annoying people who LOVES yoga.  I really, really love it.  I love it so much I did a 200 hour teaching training where I found I can really love yoga but not enjoy teaching it one bit.  But the training was invaluable and I don’t need to be a working yoga instructor for the experience to serve as a foundation for this second act of my life where I needed to find a new way of being.

What I find magical about yoga is that it has a sneaky way of getting us out of our heads and into our bodies.  It has the ability to hit the reset button for all the noise we carry around in our minds. The practice lands you in your body in a way that most people can find embodiment accessible.  We are several generations into living in our heads and taking our bodies for granted. I believe that having access to what our bodies have to tell us is the key to surviving modern life.  Most of us have no idea that the consequence of incessant bracing and muscle tension from suppressing our feelings registers as stored tension.  We’re expert at not feeling, stubbornly pushing it aside and assuming it drains out of our toes while we sleep.  This doesn’t just make a stiff and brittle form, it creates a reactive human overflowing with stored stress and concealed emotion.   

When I first started practicing yoga, I became well aquainted with how my body was full of tension. The first time I tried happy baby pose, I felt something historical release out of my hips as I pulled my knees to the ground from the bottom of my feet. I was 30 years old and at that point had been running several miles a week for over a decade.  My hamstrings were as tight as piano strings and my personality was wound just as tightly.  What I wasn't ready to admit to myself was that running didn’t make me feel better.  It ramped up the worst of my personality and if I was being honest, the hours after a run is when I’d be the most reactive.

As I was trying to balance both my running and yoga, and I was noticing that yoga was making me a better runner, but the running was hindering my yoga practice with the tension it created, I found Deepak Chopra’s book on Ayurveda, Perfect Health. Here, I read about the doshas, and how excess Vata creates anxiety and reactivity, and the solution is no running, just yoga. Eventually I leaned into the idea, retired my running shoes and committed to yoga. I haven’t looked back.  My physical body is in the best shape its ever been in, and I balanced out my excess Vata energy which basically means I have more serenity now.     

This is all to say, not everyone is going to love yoga, but the parts of the practice that make your skin crawl might be exactly what you need to find your own balance and sense of peace.  Yoga is so much more than poses that can make you look cool on Instagram. The real magic happens when you learn how to tap into the foundational focal points - breath, bandhas, and drishti. These three elements aren’t just tools for steadiness of body and mind in yoga - they’re tools for life.

When I first tried to connect my breath with the flow of movement, I felt angry and resistant.  Trying to control my breath in that way felt unnatural and I didn’t see the point.  Connecting my breath to movement came with time, and once I started really listening to my breath, I noticed how it guided me. A steady breath made the hard poses feel lighter. When I held my breath, I’d tense up, lose balance, and sometimes fall. Off the mat, it’s the same. When life gets overwhelming, our breath often shortens or disappears altogether. But if we pause, inhale deeply, and exhale fully, we create space for clarity and calm. It’s like the breath reminds us that we can keep moving forward, no matter how challenging things feel.

Then there are the bandhas, or energy locks, where we engage the muscles of the root, abdomen and throat.  Engaging these bandhas in our practice  brings more power and connection to the poses.  It’s like flipping a switch, turning scattered energy into a spark of life force energy and focus. In life, bandhas teach us to gather our strength and hold ourselves steady, especially when things feel shaky. They’re a reminder that we have an internal core, both physically and emotionally, that can ground us no matter what’s happening.

And drishti, the focus point, is where the practice comes full circle. In a pose, your drishti is what keeps you balanced and centered. Without it, you’re more likely to wobble or fall. The same goes for life. Where we focus our energy and attention is where our power goes. If I let my thoughts drift to distractions or negativity, I will be scattered and low vibe. But when I stay focused on my intention, I move forward with purpose and clarity.

The point of the whole practice is to land with a peaceful, still mind in savasana, the final pose, also called corpse pose. After all the work is done, you lay on the floor like a dead person.  But that is actually the point of the whole practice.  To get to the point where you can lay in stillness, with a body free of tension, with access to a calm mind.  Savasana is also called corpse pose because it is the death of the practice, a moment to let everything go. It’s a chance to surrender, to release all the effort, all the striving, and simply be. It’s a reminder that we can let things die, old habits, expectations, relationships that no longer serve us, and clear space for something new.

And isn’t that how life works? Every day,  even in every moment, we have the chance to begin again, which is also one of my favorite mantras - let it go, and begin again. How we are on the mat is how we are in life. If we rush through our practice, forcing poses and ignoring our breath, we likely live that way off the mat. But if we move with intention, breathe deeply, and stay focused, we experience a life that feels balanced, peaceful and fulfilling.

Every time I roll up my mat after savasana, I remind myself that I’m starting fresh, not just for the next practice, but for whatever comes next in life.