An asana or yoga pose is a container of an experience. It is a form that we inhabit for a moment, a shape that we move into and out of, a place where we might choose to pause in the continuously flowing movement of life. In yoga poses, we experience a cross section of a never-ending progression of movement and breath, extending infinitely forward and backward in time.

Each asana is a whole-body practice where we can witness how things arise, how they are sustained, and how they dissolve or are transformed.We can see how we are affected by the experience of moving into the pose, being in the pose, and moving out of the pose, and how that might affect other places in our lives where we meet change.

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We might talk about a final position, but in fact the image we hold is a kind of snapshot in a never-ending progression of movement. As long as we are alive, we are never actually still.

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The asana is not just the final arrangement of the limbs and spine, but is the full process of coming into that arrangement. If we look at the process rather than the final product, we are able to develop variations that increase or decrease the challenge of the asana without feeling that we aren't actually doing the asana until we get our head to our knee, our hands to the floor, or some other concreat goal.

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(Yoga Anatomy, Kaminoff and Mathews)

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There are three kinds of stillness we seek into an asana:

1. Of the body, like a majestic mountain

2. Of the breath, like a calm mountain lake

3. Of the mind, like the deep blue of the sky

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(Yin Yoga, Bernie Clark)