I was recently fumbling through the sun salutations in a yoga class with a teacher who was new to me. Sun salutations are always a challenge since I prefer, like most women, I think, the more feminine, “yin” yoga postures–the floor stretches, the seated forward bends. Ahh, then I can relax. But standing postures like the Triangle or Warrior One and Two, are hard work, and the sun salutations–while gorgeous to behold and contemplate–seem arduous, the tedium to endure before you reach the good stuff.

Finally, the teacher broke my struggle and said to the whole class, “Okay, now go through the salutations again, this time forgetting your body and focusing ONLY on the breath.”

Like a focus-puller shifting from background to fore, I turned my mind to my inhales and exhales, and–wow!–I flew through the salutations like a bird on the wind.
Try this in your yoga practice, or at any time when your body is fighting you or giving out. Like they used to say in those old Rolaids commercials: “How do you spell R-E-L-I-E-F?”

Here’s a wonderful quote that helps us all conceive of what focusing on the breath really means, from D.T. Suzuki, lifted from a longer article by Taitaku Pat Phelan I found on the web:

“If you think, ‘I breathe’, the ‘I’ is extra. There is no you to say ‘I.’ What we call ‘I’ is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. It just moves; that is all. When your mind is calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no ‘I,’ no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.”