What you pay attention to grows.
If your attention is attracted to negative situations and emotions, then they will grow in your awareness. Your awareness is the composite of all the things you pay attention to. Most people's attention is tossed about by small daily crises, bits of negativity that seem insignificant by themselves but that together are enough to lead to awareness fatigue.
When your attention is focused on something meaningful like a significant goal, it takes a step closer to creating health. A positive goal gives one something to live for – a project, a profession, a family – and the body responds with vitality. This kind of awareness replenishes energy. The goal oriented person wakes up each morning ready to be devoted to the task at hand.
This same self-awareness is important in your yoga practice. What you pay attention to grows. If your mind is elsewhere while your body is doing the pose, you are not actually doing yoga. You are not “in union” with what’s happening. There is a semblance of yoga occurring. The true practice is that of merging and becoming one with what you are doing. In this way you exercise sensitivity when doing the postures and develop self-trust. Your yoga will become increasingly internal. It will become your own. You will feel confident practicing yoga on your own, at home. You will be guided from within and truly practicing yoga.
For example, when you focus your attention on your feet while standing in a posture, just this focused awareness will ground you. Almost by themselves, your feet with start to have a firmer more stable contact with the floor. And if you pay attention to the four corners of your feet - big toe and little toe mounds - your weight will be more balance as the intelligence in your body starts to work naturally making subtle adjustments and corrections.
Every time you’re standing take a moment to look down at your feet.
The human foot is a marvel of supportive architecture. Its complex arrangement of bones and muscles allow us to bear our weight on a relatively tiny surface area. Small adjustments to the position of the foot on the floor can make big differences higher up the body. Even hip and back problems can be linked to poor use of the feet.
When your feet are grounded and you stand balancing equally on both feet, your stand taller. Depression is associated with drooping posture and hunched shoulders. So stand tall. You will feel expanded, spacious, relaxed. Your mood lifted.
