We also want our bodies to be responsive and resilient. We want to be able to feel, to move, and breathe with ease.

Tight abdominal muscles restrict energy flow in the torso and limit the freedom of our breath.

When called upon to do all the work, our external abs tend to harden and restrict. They can become rigid from excessive exercises. They often tighten like a wide belt right around our center — around our organ body. Organs do not want to feel restricted in this way. Organs like to function, move, and breathe within a soft and strong container.

In this video we explore how to use the back abdominal wall — all the way to the pelvic diaphragm — as the initiator of core body muscular strength.

When we explore the sensing and feeling world or our torso from the thoracic diaphragm to the pelvic floor we can find means of movement that create the strength we are looking for without inadvertently hardening and armoring our bodies.

Let me know what you think and how it feels to you.
Feel free to comment below. I love to hear your questions, thoughts, and experiences.

Let me know you are here.

With love,
Patty

The yoga sutras form a comprehensive guide to the "what, why, and how" of yoga. 

In his sutra-s, the sage Patanjali brilliantly organizes yoga’s teaching into a clear, philosophical, and practical map. The first chapter defines yoga and clarifies its aims. It lays out the philosophical context for everything that follows.

Patanjali doesn’t hold back. The text begins immediately with its core teaching.

We are introduced to how — due to a certain very critical misunderstanding — we inadvertently cause much of our own mental suffering.

Patanjali proposes a radical reorganization of perspective in order to perceive life more clearly and to relieve our suffering minds.

The yoga sutra is for everyone. We don’t need to give up our complicated daily lives to clarify our minds and recognize the fullness of the life we have been offered.

We have time. We have time to study, to pay attention, and to ask intelligent questions. Take the time.

The yoga sutra is a text that when read from an embodied perspective give us more than discipline and technique. In my reading Patanjali’s sutra is a loving guide, a compassionate teacher for those of us who are serious enough to do the work.

This post contains two articles on the yoga sutra-s from an embodied perspective. I hope they can enrich your knowledge and inspire more questioning as you continue your journey.

Chapter One — An Embodied Perspective

Chapter Two makes the deal perfectly clear.

The good news:

Patanjali says yoga offers freedom. Freedom from so many difficulties we impose upon ourselves due to our lack of clarity about who we are, and who we are in relationship to everything else.

The tough news:

The solution will require us to take responsibility for doing what is necessary to improve our perceiving abilities. That is what we call practice. There is no free pass here. Clarifying the mind takes skill, patience, and persistence.

Chapter Two — An Embodied Perspective

Thank you so much for being here and for reading,
Patty

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Are you wondering whether a “master class” is right for you? If you’re even thinking about it, I believe this one will be.

In this case, master class simply means that your attention turns inward.

Rather than concentrating on creating shapes and forms, we become interested in what is actually happening inside the body.

Advanced yoga has exactly zero to do with performing difficult postures. Zero.

Yoga is process. Process for refining, clarifying, and honing awareness. Posture work helps us contain our minds, learn about our bodies, and assists our journeys — but it is not so much what we do… as how we do it.

In Embodyoga® we follow our body’s sensing and feeling inward through the density of our human form, our subtle anatomy and intelligence, and all the way to personal and universal consciousness. Our experience of the postures is enriched by the increasing fullness of our perception.

Wisdom is a real thing. Paying attention to this process is key to continuing to have a rich yoga practice for the rest of ones life.

These subtle aspects of yoga are naturally revealed as the years go by if we remain open and continue to pay attention to the inner world.

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The class below focuses on freeing our subtle body core — especially the heart.

Watch the full class…

In this class…

We begin with chakras and breath, sensing and feeling our way toward the heart.

From there we explore the subtle movements of breath that nourish and support this remarkable center.

Larger movement follows—not to perfect poses, but to awaken perception throughout the heart and the body’s energetic field.

We close with an accessible and deeply nourishing meditation known as the Microcosmic Orbit, a profound practice for balancing our inner and outer expressions of self.

The class is both informative and experiential. I hope you’ll join me.

With love and gratitude,

Patty

This class was recorded live on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, through Shraddha Yoga.

I’d love to have you join us on a Wednesday. You’re welcome anytime.

Register here for Live Wednesdays Streaming through Shraddha Yoga

Want to explore more?

Everything here is open now—no more paywall.

Browse through the categories below and follow whatever sparks your curiosity.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posts on Breathing

Wisdom: Living Philosophy

Embodied Anatomy

Meditation is Natural

Practice

Each week we take a deep dive into an aspect of body, consciousness, and living anatomy through the philosophical and practical study of yoga.

Register here for next Wednesday’s live class.

We’ll be here all summer long. Drop in anytime.

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Please share this class with anyone who might enjoy this approach to yoga.

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As always, thank you,
❤️
Patty

Inquiry through yoga. Knowledge, touch, breath, and movement.

Your fluid body wants to be free! It wants to flow unimpeded, to nurture, to cleanse, to wash… and to touch — inner touch.

Touch is the sense associated with the heart chakra and love. Can your fluids give love to all they touch?

Can you know that love as embodied experience?

Join this Wednesday • Pay from the Heart option available

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Embodyoga. Using yoga’s tried and true system of paying attention with kindness, curiosity, and respect we journey into the inner world in ways we may not have even know to be possible. In this case we explore the lymphatic and interstitial fluid

We find intelligence and grace. We find knowledge and wisdom. We find an unending world within, and as we explore, we learn more and more about all of life — from the personal to the universal and back again.

Join these live Wednesdays. Tomorrow is a great time to start! I look forward to meeting you!

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With love,
Patty

Each week we explore the living intelligence of body and consciousness through movement, breath, anatomy, meditation, and direct experience.

This live-streaming class is offered through my dear friend and colleague, Corinne Andrews of Shraddha Yoga in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Register with Shraddha Yoga.

Can’t join live? Simply register for the class and you can view the recordings whenever it works for you.

I hope to see you there.

With love,
Patty

These delicate inner movements are deeper than the muscles and bones. They feel different. You can use these more subtle movements of heart and lungs as a foundation for simple twisting postures.

In this example we are initiating our movement from membranes that wrap our heart and lungs. This changes the consciousness of the process — and — it frees these membranes so that they don’t stick and harden inside on one another and their surrounding tissues.

Your heart is wrapped in its own membrane and each side of your lungs has its own membrane too. The heart wrapping is called the pericardium and each lung has its own wrapping that is called the pleura.

We don’t often think about freeing these fascial structures that contain our heart and lungs, but we can do so. We can do so to big effect.

Let’s face it, fascia gets stuck. Membranes get stuck and its easy to imagine how the membranes that wrap our heart and lungs might harden, resist, or get stuck on their surrounding structures.

With a little patience and kindness you can free these critical membranes, their fluids, and the organs that they hold.

Enjoy your explorations. Let me know how it goes.

💖

Patty

Whenever we bear weight in any joint it is imperative that the force of that movement not stop at the joint!

Overtime those shearing forces disturb the joint’s integrity, damaging its complex balance of soft tissue supports. Ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and joint capsules are strong, but they are designed to direct forces through joints, not into them.

We sometimes talk about it in terms of “biomechanics”. The only problem is that the body is not mechanical in any way.

The body is an energetic and alive organism composed of intelligence and form. It is way beyond our concept of mechanics.

In yoga we look at all of this in terms of the movement of life force - prana. We explore directly how forces and energy can flow in the most healthful and supportive ways — and how we can assist and enjoy those processes.

Thank you for being here.
Feel free to comment and to share this post with your friends.

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Patty

This is not a self improvement project.

First things first, try to excavate any ideas you still hold about how you should improve. We are not talking about becoming a better version of yourself.

Just sit down and do the work - the play - of opening to a much larger version of reality. Who you actually are now is perfectly good enough to see the full picture of life.

Just sit down, pay attention, and do the work.

This is a process of observing without judgment. It is an unraveling of resistance and harsh strands of erroneous conceptual thinking that happens as you continue to pay attention to the inner world of who you are.

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Pranayama offers tools.

Yoga’s pranayama practices are tools for excavating and unearthing held and restrictive patterns in body and mind. One’s personality is not the problem. The sorrows, the losses, the loves in themselves are not the issue.

But clinging to them and becoming caught in endless rumination obscures our ability to see clearly.

Cultivating Embodied Resilience

The process of alternate nostril breathing is literally designed to balance the autonomic nervous system. Balance in the autonomic functions creates resilience.

Resilience has little to do with feeling fine all the time. Resilience is the ability to respond, to move on, to let go, and be free for another experience.

As yoga practitioners, practices that directly affect the nervous system are some of the best we can do to assist our process toward greater resilience and even equanimity.

One of the very best techniques for nervous system balancing is nadi shodhana, more commonly known as alternate nostril breathing.

Alternate nostril breathing is elegant and simple.

Alternate nostril breathing is just that — shifting the pathway of our inhalations and exhalations through each nostril alternately.

Experience, science, and yoga all confirm, alternate nostril breathing is a powerful tool for easing the thinking and feeling bodymind.

I hope you enjoy this practice and find it helpful.

Feel free to comment below and to share the post with your friends.

With love and gratitude for your presence here,
❤️
Patty

Pranayama is the practice of refining the energetic system of bodymind through specific breathing techniques that progressively balance, tone, and integrate the functioning of body and mind.

Pranayama is designed to still the waters of consciousness. To reduce the noise and clutter of our perceiving processes so that we can witness the nature of life more clearly.

Does it relieve stress? Yes.

And it has a very specific role in yoga as part of a larger system of tools for clarifying perception.

From Esoteric Practice to Everyday Life

There was a time when yoga breathing was considered to be an esoteric — if sometimes helpful — magical process reserved for ascetic yogis in India who sat on animal skins in caves and wore little clothing.

Not anymore.

What once seemed foreign and even weird is now recognized to be of real interest in our lives. We don’t live in caves, but many of us now practice techniques that until very recently held almost no sway at all in the western world.

We westerners picked up these practices because we — the people — were finding pranayama techniques to be very effective at helping us feel better.

So effective that western science became interested in studying them.

Breathing for Stress Relief

Through science we can now name some of the ways our physiology changes when we alter the breath in specific ways.

We now have methods designed and prescribed by western science for calming the nervous system. These methods most commonly include lengthening the exhalation and briefly holding the breath.

Of course, the foundation upon which many of these western techniques have been developed can be found in yoga traditions going back a few thousand years.

References to pranayama practice can be found in the early Vedic scriptures. Folks were lengthening their exhalations and holding their breath out at least as far back as 800 BCE, as noted in the Hindu Upanishads.

No surprise, right?

If a fairly simple technique can be used to ease human experience, it makes sense that it may have been around for a very long time.

The roots of these teachings are still planted deeply in the culture and history of India.

The Difference Between Eastern and Western Approaches

So what is the difference between our western take on breathing for health and the eastern yoga processes known as pranayama?

First of all, the western techniques — based largely on yoga practices — are excellent. They help many of us.

But western breathing techniques are often isolated techniques used to remedy a bad situation. We tend to wait until we are overwhelmed to “practice our breathing.”

Yoga breathing was never meant to be only an emergency intervention.

The approach of yogic pranayama is different.

Pranayama is not simply a method for calming a momentarily agitated nervous system. Yogic pranayama is a progressive process for refining the nervous system as well as the rest of the body’s energetic systems.

Pranayama is progressive, relational, sequential, and developmental — not just a collection of breathing hacks.

Pranayama Develops Gradually

As a progressive practice, it matters which techniques you use. It matters how you do them. It matters what you are attending to as you practice.

In other words, it is a system.

We do not begin by forcing or controlling the breath. We begin by preparing ourselves to feel it more fully.

Pranayama develops gradually. We refine sensitivity. We learn how to relax. We learn how the nervous system responds to the touch of breath.

And we begin where we are.

We learn to apply gentle agency to alter the breath in simple ways. We learn the subtlety of directing breath without excessive effort or force.

A gentle touch is imperative.

Not harsh.
Not forced.
Not trying to get to your maximum anything.

Exactly the opposite.

The easier and softer the practice becomes, the better the healing proceeds.

Why?

The nervous system responds to the balancing touch of breath most effectively when it is allowed to return to its own restful state.

This is one of the cases where less is definitely more.

Resting cycles between techniques are critical. We learn not to hurry the process. We learn to release effort and allow the nervous system to absorb the information and gifts of practice in its own resting cycle.

I often call this resting phase of practice “recovery breathing.”

No matter how advanced you are, this can be a very helpful part of practice.

First a video for you. Start with this:

Cellular Breathing.

Cellular breathing is the foundation of all breathing practices. This is the place to begin.

Before we ever breathed air, we were bathed in breath from the inside for nine months in utero. We know this breath very well — from the inside out.

Why Practice Pranayama?

Ease in pranayama is key — as is having the underlying context for why these techniques work so well. This is where a wise and experienced teacher can mean so much to learning.

When we understand a practice we are much more likely to do it.

Pranayama study introduces us to the possibility of releasing embodied stress and tension, clarifying the mind, and training consciousness to hold a wider angle on life.

It relieves the sadness of feeling isolated — unconnected — even from our own loved ones.

Pranayama clears the mind, making it much easier — in fact effortless — to see the larger picture and to connect with our people, our communities, and the world.

Watch for much more on breathing: Simple progressive instructions for practices that are gentle enough for everyone and extremely effective when practiced regularly.

Consciously visiting the inner world of cellular respiration is profoundly nurturing and soothing to body and mind.

Recognizing and enjoying the inner comfort and ease of cellular intelligence and breath is completely natural and effortless once you recognize that it is possible and know how to direct your awareness inwardly.

Let me lead you in the video above. You can do this!

I hope you can find the time for this full class (1hr 20m). You may have to carve out the time — I get it. But this class explores one of the truly powerful gateways to calm vitality that lives within the body, waiting to be accessed.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Tai Chi, and Chi Gong, this place is called Ming Men — the “Gate of Life” or “Gate of Vitality.” It is associated with the deep back body at the level of the second and third lumbar vertebrae. Martial artists sometimes refer to it as the “Gate of Power.”

For me, Ming Men has become foundational to practices such as Navel Flooding Breath, Cellular Respiration, and Embryological Breathing. It is a source point — a deep inner opening into support, breath, and vitality.

I also want to acknowledge my colleague, Bob Lehnberg, who first introduced me to this perspective and to the power of what is often called the “Gate of Life.” 1

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With love,
Patty

I share short thoughts and posts on Substack Notes. These brief notes don’t show up in your inbox.
For Notes you have to actively choose to go there.

I kind of like that, don’t you?

Notes is where I feel free to share whatever I am exploring at the moment — things that don’t always become full essays or videos.

I hope you’ll check in with me there. Read, comment, or simply browse.
And if you feel like it, you can share your own thoughts too. I love that.

Examples from Notes:

(Click on the note below to read the whole thing.)

Where does love flow in the body?

What? Why do we do this again?

A moment of doubt

What the elements feel like

Botox Nation

Slipping into despair…not now, please.

Feeling the beginning of a particular day

There is a lot to explore here. I hope you will check in regularly. I post often and would really enjoy seeing you there.

With love,
Patty

From mouth to anus — there are opportunities to say yes or no to what we consume.

Do I want this? Is this healthy or not? What should I do about it now — in my mouth, my throat, my stomach and intestines?

Shall I absorb this or not? Can I release it or do I need to hold onto it for dear life?

How do we choose, take in, and process nourishment from our environment?

We are actually quite vulnerable through our digestive tracts. Through eating, as in breathing, we are in constant relationship with everything else. We are interfacing and relating to the outside world right through the very center of our being. What we take in becomes us. What we release is returned to the environment and used and processed over and over again.

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How we live in our organ body tells a story of who we are in our emotional selves. Our overall relationship to food and taking nourishment is reflected through the various parts and functions of the tract. From mouth to anus we are in relationship with our inherent willingness to take in, to receive and relate, and to release and let go.

Enjoy the video and the inquiry it points to for yourself.

With love,

Patty

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For example — take the nervous system.

The nervous system lives wrapped in fluids. It functions within them. The question is not whether the fluids are present — they clearly are — but how we understand their role.

Often the fluids associated with the nervous system are described as “supportive.” And as supportive, they are quietly placed in a secondary position — necessary, but not primary.

But what does “support” actually mean here?

Are these fluids simply there in the background? Or are they participating — communicating, containing, influencing — working hand in hand with every aspect of nervous system function?

Have we considered the intelligence and capacity that the waters of our body hold? What are they doing?

When we embark onto a journey into the subtle world of breath we want to be sure we are comfortably seated. It takes a moment to find your comfort. Take that moment.

Tuning In

We bring our awareness — our inner sensing and feeling — to our bodies. Exploring our embodied form, we feel our skin, our muscles, our ribs, and the movement of breathing. Then we take our feeling inquiry right into our moving lungs.

Finding a comfortable seat evading you? This can help. Sometimes we don’t even know we are uncomfortable!

Softening and Deepening — Ujjayi — Victorious Breath

Keeping the trajectory of our inquiry internal we continuing to feel. We explore the simple technique that is called ujjayi. Ujjayi, also known the ‘victorious’ breath, is not about an external victory. It is about the internal victory. Ujjayi is a tool for sculpting our way as we travel in through layers of consciousness and form.

It is a simple and powerful technique for lengthening and softening our breathing process. Often misunderstood, ujjayi should never be harsh or loud. Rather we use it as an internal tool for calming and soothing bodymind.

Enlisting a gentle sound in our throats, good ujjayi practice produces a warm deep hum as the breath moves into and out of the lungs. The sound itself is produced by using a soft inner touch in the in the region of the epiglottis just above the vocal cords. Ujjayi’s action is a slight constriction in the back of the throat that has the effect of controlling the length of inhale and exhale. Its additional bonus is that we can enjoy the soothing humming sound that it makes. Never forced. Always easy.

I hope some of this has been helpful for you. Much more on breathing and pranayama is coming soon.

Please take a moment to click the like button below and consider supporting this work by becoming a paid subscriber.

Thank you!

With love,
Patty

Composed of the same elements and processes as nature, we come into form. We grow and take shape. We are conscious and relational beings.

We exist in the obvious ways we see and explore in daily life.We also exist at the energetic — less tangible layers of consciousness and form.

We are body, mind, and spirit.

Yoga’s Map of Embodiment

According to yoga, one of the most basic foundations of our individuality is that we are fundamentally composed of the same basic elements as nature.

We are nature.

“This is learning from the body, by the body, through its own brilliance and perceiving capacity.”

Awake and alive at our very cores, we are creatures of conscious structure — with the ability to act, feel, perceive, and relate to ourselves and others.

Empty, awake awareness is fundamental to who we are. It is woven through every aspect of our human form. Awareness engages the impulse to create life, using the elements of nature to build the framework of the body.

In yoga, these elements are earth, water, fire, air, and space.

Yoga gives us clear and concise maps for exploring the fullness of who we are — from the most subtle layers of embodied consciousness all the way through to the densest expressions of form and function."

The Offering

Everything about who we are lives within this body.

It is right here — from the obvious personal form to the usually completely unrecognized depths of our universality.

The universal and the personal are inextricably woven into the fabric of our human form. They are fatefully deeply attracted and bound to one another. They cannot be separated.

But, they can be known.

Known by you.

So, it is about learning.

And this learning is in the body. Not about the body or even about the bodymind as a conceptual idea.

This is learning from the body, by the body, through its own brilliance and perceiving capacity.

Thank you!

If you enjoy receiving these posts, please click the like button below. It really helps!

With love,
Patty

These elemental forces are not abstract ideas. They are the living architecture of body, mind, and consciousness — the ways universal intelligence expresses itself through individual form.

Each element has its obvious qualities, and each reveals layer upon layer of subtlety when we learn to feel more deeply.

Through regular embodied inquiry practices, we sense how these forces move within us and how they influence our tendencies, emotions, perceptions, and ways of being. At the same time, they open a doorway to something larger: our connection to nature, to awareness, and to the source from which all life emerges.

To embody the elements is to receive profound support for living a complex human life.

They shape how we think.
How we feel.
How we act.
How we respond.

This inquiry brings depth, steadiness, and clarity to our experience of self. It strengthens our connection to the body, to the natural world, and to the deeper weave of life that holds us all.

The session I mention in the opening video is here:

More to explore:

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Patty

Digestion is an Intimate Act

We are actually quite vulnerable through our digestive tracts. Through eating, as in breathing, we are in constant relationship with everything else. We are interfacing and relating to the outside world right through the very center of our being. What we take in becomes us. What we release is returned to the environment and used and processed over and over again.

How we live in our organ body tells a story of who we are in our emotional selves. Our overall relationship to food and taking nourishment is reflected through the various parts and functions of the tract. From mouth to anus we are in relationship with our inherent willingness to take in, to receive and relate, and to release and let go.

We have many opportunities to say “Yes” or “No” to what we take into our bodies.

All the way along the tube from mouth to anus,, the different sections of the digestive tract have their own processes and feelings about what we put into our bodies — what we bring into our intimate inner world. From mouth to anus and out, we have inner feelings - and ways of responding - to what is traveling right through the very center of our bodies and integrating us with the natural world around us. This is yummy, I love this!” or “No! I do not want that and I will not take it in.”

How well does this complex inner process of receiving nurturance into our bodies go? Does it feel good? Is it easy and comfortable, or are there places along the pathway that revolt and say, no?

Do you notice? the invitation here is to explore the process and feelings of digestion in our own bodies. It is a multilayered exploration and for those of us who are interested it can be both fascinating and rewarding. We learn about ourselves…again. And we have an opportunity to alter our choices, if we so choose.

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EMBODYING DIGESTIVE TRACT IN YOGA

Desire, Life, and Movement
From the Embodyoga 200-hr. Teacher Training and Study Manual, 2018

Our digestive tract is a long, sensitive, and continuous tube, from mouth to anus, through which we are in constant and intimate relationship with our environment. Its form and function derive from the qualities of consciousness that are expressing through these tissues. The tract is a tender, supple, resilient, and highly intelligent channel that travels right through the very center of our embodied form.

Its tenderness is expressed through the waves and arcs of its shape, and its vulnerability through the softness and receptivity of the epithelial linings of the tube. It is strong and capable of self-protection. It can accept or reject what makes its way in and fight off invaders with its secretions of chemicals and immune substances. It protects itself for its own safety, and for the integrity of the body as a whole.

Digestion is not only a physiological process of breaking down and absorbing nutrients from food.

In yoga study we recognize its mental and emotional processes, as well. With all of its functions and layers of consciousness, embodying the digestive tract in yoga can offer us deeper awareness of who we are and how we make choices in our lives.

We understand and assimilate feelings in our gut. We digest and make sense of ideas and perceptions. We formulate self-concepts. We are vulnerable and responsive to our self-perceptions, how we feel in relationship to others, our environment, and all that we choose—or don’t choose—to take in.

So much of the information emanating from our digestive tract is personal and affords us access to our deepest yearnings and desires, but its subtle nature is universal, as well. In conscious embodiment we learn to accept and enjoy our shared humanity.

We experience directly that our vulnerability and our humanity, with all of its challenges and beauty, is what brings richness and appreciation for life. Taking this journey inward, without resistance, is an important step on the way toward true self-acceptance. In turn, self-acceptance brings us access to deeper layers of self-awareness.

Deepening awareness of what it is to be human, we are simultaneously opening to the depth of our universality, our shared essence, and glimpsing the nature of Source.

MOVEMENT AND YOGA

Our movement is a direct expression of the way our consciousness is interwoven with form and function. All movement carries information and intelligence, is rich with life, and tells a story. The initiation of movement that we feel inside arises from Awareness and consciousness blending with prana as their weave begins to take form.

Small at first, inner movement expands until we can feel and see it expressing externally as well.

In fact, life is movement.

Exploring who we are is basic to yoga practice and the impulse to move is a basic principle of life. In fact, life is movement. Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen has said, “How we move is who we are.” Movement is an expression of the integration of awareness, function and form.

Our universality and our individuality are expressed through movement. As long as we are alive, our body, mind, and spirit are moving.

Yoga asana is a laboratory for exploring the consciousness that drives our various expressions and actions in the world. In asana we can make choices about which aspects of ourselves to explore at any given time.

Because of its nature, the digestive tract is fertile ground for inquiry. A soft-tissue core-body structure, it expresses feelings, and sensations along its circuitous route.

In embodied asana, not only does the consciousness of the tissue itself have an opportunity to express and be known, but the life force-flow within the tissue has a chance to balance and return to greater health. Good asana practice can make us healthier and assist in balancing the nervous system.

Properly done, it will increase well-being and overall vitality. Asana is also a powerful tool for clarifying the mind. It helps us to excavate and uncover the layers upon layers of illusion—often in the form of self-aggrandizing or self-loathing—that can cloud our vision of reality.

Fully embodied asana practice builds a foundation for allowing ourselves to see more clearly. It helps to clear the pathways of perception.

The etheric and the transcendent layers of life are important, and so are the human and feeling layers of our being. Asana is the perfect practice for blending the spiritual and the human.

When we see an asana practice that is beautiful, what we are witnessing is the fullness and the depth of the practitioner. Inner acceptance and range of feeling makes yoga asana look and feel full and soft. It speaks of the practitioner’s inner world and its richness makes it much satisfying in execution.

Asana practice offers us a format for exploring how our personal movement and expression is witnessed and supported by Universal Awareness. There is love in this.

The fluidity of the organ body unifies and grounds the other elements and keeps us from becoming dry or hard in our movements. The individual expression of warmth and liquidity, emotionality, and love intermingle with the etheric and the spiritual—fully human and fully divine—expressed as the uninhibited dance of prana and awareness.

The image of the dancing Shiva shows this bold willingness to be and to express without inhibition. It calls for us to be inclusive of our whole selves and allow our full expression. This is the way to freedom.

DESIRE

Our digestive tract is a perfect body-mind region for examining the nature of desire. Food and eating are primal aspects of life for everyone. The innate desire to stay alive—to survive—underlies our relationship to food and nourishment.

We need food. We want to feel the process of taking in, absorbing, and utilizing nourishment. Ultimately, eating is not a choice. We can control it, but we cannot eliminate it.

In our first nine months of life within the womb sustenance flowed within our bodies automatically. We were fed. We didn’t experience any need to procure our own nourishment. Then birth happened. We were separated from the connection to nourishment that we had come to trust.

This is when we experience our first welling up of hunger and are driven to search for our own food. We have the motivation of our senses and our inner feelings—the desire—to seek and obtain what we need.

Primal ferocious desire motivates us to go after what we need to live. We look for, find the nipple, and latch onto it. For the first time, using our own power and will, we begin to suck and draw nourishment into ourselves.

Long before linear thinking, we are driven to survive. In the best of situations, our actions result in the rewards of inner comfort and satisfaction. We learn important lessons about life and our personal ability to pursue, obtain, take in, absorb what we need, and release what no longer serves us.

Not all yoga views desire as a positive force. More often than not, we are warned against desire of all kinds and are even advised to, “Cut it off at the root”. However, tantric philosophy is radically accepting of desire as the powerful force that it is.

Tantra recognizes desire to be the impulse that gives rise to the entire manifest plane of existence. It observes it to be the primary creative and motivational force in the universe. Tantra tells us that desire is at the base of and woven into all aspects of individual and Universal Consciousness. We are encouraged to study and channel desire in the most positive ways.

Desire is the main principle.

Even as desire is a primary impulse and motivating force for action, there is a real difference between wholesome and unwholesome desire. Healthy desire is a celebration of the impulse to live. A plant leans toward the sun to sustain life, our body’s cells call for the breath, and an infant reaches for the breast.

We desire relationship and love. In yoga we reach for our aspirations. We desire to know life as it is. We desire to fully recognize with awe and wonder the movement of creation. We have profound physical, emotional, and spiritual desires.

The kind of rampant desire that we see expressed in convoluted forms in the world today makes a mockery of the pure impulse to live, to relate, and to create that is recognized and revered in Tantra.

Unwholesome desires do not pave the way to any real satisfaction at all. They simply stimulate craving and continually wanting more and more acquisitions that can never satisfy. Desire for things and ego gratification of all kinds, in the endeavor to satisfy an inner void, is clearly not healthy.

Unfortunately, this distortion of desire’s pure impulse is very common. It confuses us and obfuscates our perception of the purity and power of desire as the motivating principle of life that it is.

Navigating healthy desire and unearthing unwholesome desire is part of an integrated path of yoga. If we are not planning to transcend and exit this physical plane of existence quite yet, but are looking to experience it fully, with an understanding of its basis in intelligence and love, we will have to use our powers of discrimination to navigate the treacheries of our own minds and the confusion of the modern world.

Unhealthy cravings and misconceptions about life must be unearthed and witnessed directly in the light of day.

If we so choose, through the digestive tract we are invited to become aware of the intensity of our primal needs and desires. As we look within we may find pockets of discomfort, lack of satisfaction, feelings of rejection, confusion, sadness and loss.

Also, or alternately, we may feel deep abiding comfort, love, and presence. The quality of the experience really doesn’t matter. What is important is the journey and the willingness to see.

We witness the places where we made decisions and came to conclusions about life at a very young age. Often we find that these early assumptions have created patterns of perception that are no longer useful. In revisiting them, we gain choice.

Our choice does not include the option of changing our initial experience, but it does include the very real option of understanding ourselves in a new light and a new perspective that includes inner health and love as the very nature of who we are.

This process helps us to release inhibitions that we have inadvertently placed on our life-force by trying to limit and suppress thoughts and feelings that we may not want to experience anymore.

Desire always intermingles with our inner emotional world. We wanted things that we did or did not receive. We still want things—important things. A deep softening results from the tremendous release of struggle that we feel when we are able to experience the vast force of desire and embrace it.

We spontaneously begin to witness that love is the motivating force behind wholesome desire. We recognize in ourselves how the commingling of desire and love is a major driving force in our lives that is ultimately not dependent on what we do or do not receive.

It is deeper than that. It is our nature.

With love and gratitude,
💛
Patty

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It goes like this:

go inward → pay super close attention to what you find → allow it to be there → go deeper → notice what is under that → do it again → and again → allow that too → don’t get all emotional or intellectual about it → let it be

Meditation on the elements is one way in

Earth, water, fire, air, and space — these are the building blocks of our embodied form. They shape the physical body, but they also shape our inner life. They are not just “out there.” They are here. They are us.

We tend to recognize them as structural — bones, fluids, heat, breath, space.

But what we often miss is this:

Consciousness is also form

Thinking, feeling, sensing, tasting — all of it has structure and shape. All of it!

Your thoughts.
Your loves.
Your resistances.
Your ideas about who you are.

All of it is form.

And all of it is constantly changing.

Rising, falling, shifting, dissolving, reforming.

Most of the time, we are pulled around by this movement — identified with it, reacting to it, and unconsciously shaped by it — never seeing that there is more.

As important as the elements are, they are only part of the story.

Exploring the elemental layers of self through meditation

By exploring the elemental layers of ourselves, we begin to see ourselves more clearly. The inner rising and fallings of our elemental selves become more, rather than less, conscious.

And in that seeing, something important happens:

We gain choice.

Choice in how we perceive.
Choice in how we respond.
Choice in whether we are carried away by the movement — or whether we are able to stay aware within it.

Without denying the personal, we go underneath it.

We ask:

Who am I in all of this?

From where does all of this arise — this movement of thought, feeling, identity, memory, reactivity?

If I am part of it…
what am I, really?

What begins to reveal itself is not another idea.

It is a direct experience:

Vast awareness — open, awake, and alive — not caught in the constant shaping and reshaping of the personal self.

You don’t have to believe this. True inner exploration doesn’t require belief. In fact preconceptions can limit the freedom of our inquiry.

You can see it for yourself — if you’re willing to look. If you are curious enough and determined to know.

And this is where the practice becomes very simple.

Not easy. But simple.

We keep going.

After more than 50 years of serious inquiry into what it means to live and embody yoga I am choosing to make this work available to everyone.

No more paywall.

You are free to watch, read, and engage with all of it.

If this work matters to you, I ask that you support it through a paid subscription.

This body of work develops over time. Your support allows it to continue — for both of us.

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Where the elements come in

We journey in and around the elemental source of our thoughts and feelings. Some are very rough or dense — shrouded in the earth element or burning with the fire, for example.

Each element relates to its own aspect of consciousness.

Earth is dense and almost impossible to see through.

Water is emotional and flowing. It relates to our emotional body and mind.

Fire gives light and warmth. It stimulates our intellect, our digesting of thoughts and food.

Air! Air begins to offer a wider vision that is not completely bound by the personal anymore. Air brings in more love and increasing freedom in our perceiving minds.

Space: Finally, the most subtle, the least dense of the elements. The one that actually creates the container for all others. Space is truly spacious. In the space element we meet the place where the universal and the personal are blending. It feels good. It is like the big, “Ahhhh…” of our lives.

“Ah yes, this is here…and it always was, and it always will be.” Space is where comfort lives. It is always here, it always underlies everything else, and it is available to embody, know directly and experience as the foundation of all other experiences.

Part of staying with it, is learning not to resist seeing aspects of self that you don’t like.

If you stay with it — really stay — something shifts.
Not by force. Not by analysis.
By seeing.

go inward
pay attention
allow
go deeper
notice what is underneath
do it again

This isn’t about transcending your life.

It’s about knowing what you are doing in the middle of living it.

Learn to meditate with me. We take the effortless effort path of paying attention — close attention — and allowing the inner processes to reveal themselves.

It’s great to be able to share with you.
Thank you.

With love,
Patty