In one of the most important texts of yoga that were written, the Yoga Sutra, the author cites as the first and most important step in the path of yoga practice a-himsa, which literally means non-violence. If we think of the physical practice of yoga, we can imagine how important this can be for us. Nonviolence understood in mental and physical sense, then in our actions and in our thoughts; no violence towards others and above all to ourselves.
While I'm moving in a posture, while I'm breathing, I'm careful not to force and compete with myself, not to bring a stressful situation even in the practice of yoga. Then a moment of kindness, of respect and love for the only instrument through which we can experience life from moment to moment, the body.
A beautiful practice would be to also be observed for a small period of time and note how many times we are actually violent towards ourselves, for others the judge or judge, in not accept us or simply in how we breathe, in how we move the body and how we keep it live…
Related to this is another fundamental concept of the same author who is to Ishvara Pranidhana, ie the ability to surrender to a greater extent or just something top of our little personality of our ego.
So after the discipline, after work, essential in yoga becomes letting go, give up the, the abandonment of all tension, every effort as a skill to be guided beyond the ordinary mind.
We can reflect on this: each technique is really mastered when it can be performed by combining the intensity and discipline the ability to relax to let embrace… of letting oneself by something bigger….
Then the mind can be brought into unexplored spaces of freedom, as if he really began to know itself….