The Bhagavad Gita, one of yoga’s most sacred texts, spends eighteen chapters exploring the path of enlightenment.  In Chapter two, verse 58, Krishna says to Arjuna, “Having drawn back all the senses from the objects of sense as a tortoise draws back into his shell that man is a man of firm wisdom.”  The instruction is to draw inward like a tortoise in order to find the experience of pratyahara, what the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali define as sense withdrawal.  From this place free of external distractions, one can rest in atman (or the true Self), and find eternal peace.

When I think about expanding to the edge of my limits, I think about my earliest days in this practice.  Before I understood the depth of Yoga practice, it was all about the stretch for me. I would push my body at all costs, reaching for the “perfection” that only a hyper mobile body and youth can bring.  And, invariably I learned a lot of painful lessons, and fell short of learning the one’s with any real meaning.  Sure, I had the “yoga” high that so many do after pushing beyond my physical and sometimes mental boundaries, but I didn’t have the strength or foundation to maintain that expansive feeling off my mat. Now, after a fair share of time coupled with many humbling experiences, I approach asana differently. I give equal amounts of focus and attention to the foundation and the strength need to make expansion sustainable just as I do in a really deep stretch. I believe that when practiced with full awareness, Upavista Konasana (Seated Angle) can teach us how to reach to the very edge of our limits through strength and groundedness, so that the feeling of expansion can reach well beyond our mats and into our lives.