1. Students who listen to their body during yoga, practicing without pain or striving, progress faster and rid themselves of chronic pain more readily than student's who push through pain and strive during their practice. In yoga you must learn to listen to your body, going with it and not against it. If you treat your body with kindness, it will respond in an amazing way.
2. Controlling the breath during practice determines progress. If a student's breath is labored, forced or shallow during practice, their progress will be slowed or thwarted. Yoga teaching quote: "The breath is the wild horse, the mind is the rider. In yoga the rider MUST control the wild horse".
3. Alignment matters. Its not that a student is doing something the wrong way when alignment is off, its that a pose will physically be more comfortable and the breath will flow more easily when a student seeks and finds their optimal alignment in a pose. Sometimes this means a pose must be modified, or a prop must be used. When alignment is enhanced the correct muscles necessary to support the form of the pose are activated, thereby enhancing openness, strength, flexibility, and steadiness. These enhancements enable progression.
4. Continuing to work at your current fitness level in the poses that are attainable for you will enable you to do more challenging poses over time. All poses truly do build upon each other, increasing strength, flexibility, range of motion, and balance as you go. These increases allow you to master more challenging poses.
5. If your foundation is off in a pose, everything above it will be skewed also. This creates stress on the joints involved as part of the foundation and also above the foundation. Turned out hands, turned out wrists will stress the bones of the wrist, the elbow, and the shoulder. Likewise with turned out or in feet (feet, ankles, knees, and hips).
6. Seeking a neutral pelvis in any pose will increase comfort in the low back and will enhance core strength, and optimal breathing. This is something you will learn in yoga....what is neutral pelvis and how to find it.
7. Yoga will strengthen your core like no other. At 62 my core strength has never been better. I was an athlete my entire life, competing in springboard diving, swimming, volleyball, basketball, and racquetball and I can honestly say my core has never been stronger thanks to yoga.
8. Yoga can be used to enhance healing old and new injuries. Over the years I (Sharon) have used yoga in conjunction with western medicine to heal;
   1. chronic sciatica pain and numbness,
   2. a left arm that would lock sometimes (a snow skiing injury that became more problematic over time) and could not be raised forward and up - instead I had to bend my elbow, bring my hand close to my shoulder, and then raise.
   3. I broke my back (compression fracture of L1) snow skiing in 2007. No lasting problems whatsoever or hardly a set back. I believe my muscle strength, my balance, and posture resulted in minimizing the effects of the trauma.
   4. My neck used to be weak, cocked to the left and I had chronic nerve pain, disks that would "slip" and extreme headaches. Years ago I considered surgery to help me because the pain was so prevalent and was interfering with my quality of life. Thankfully instead of surgery I found first strength training (resulting in overly tight trapezius muscles and tension headaches, but my nerve pain was gone), and then yoga taught me to release the tension in my neck and shoulders, lengthen my trapezius muscles, and use optimal alignment to strengthen my neck.
   5. Surgeries and numerous injuries from an active lifestyle over the years. I have never injured myself doing yoga.
9. We are all changing every moment of every day. Life is not static. Time is not meant to be held onto. We are not meant to get stuck in the past, rather to keep growing and learning until we take our last glorious breath.
10. Yoga is for Every Body! Anyone at any stage of their life can use yoga to practice mastery of the mind and the body. Yoga is a vehicle for self-transformation and personal growth. Every time we step on our mats we practice being present and accepting the present moment exactly as it is, with self care, while experiencing it fully.