Yoga is Everything, Eight-Limbed Path Focus

From an Instagram post on 5/10/2018 doing a handstand on volcanic rock

When Patanjali wrote down the yoga sutras 2000 years ago, and the tradition of yoga practiced by renunciates in caves and quiet, meditative places, was brought to householders who lived out normal lives, to now, in which yoga, to me, is an exceptional way to live your life as beautifully as possible in each present moment. 

From the yoga sutras came the eight-limbed (ashtanga) path. The yamas and niyamas, moral precepts; to asana, the physical practice; pranayama, breath or life force; turning inside, pratyahara; one-pointed focus, dharana; meditation, dhyana; and samadhi, bliss.

To me, yoga is everything and in life, how you do anything is how you do everything. You might think doing a handstand hold, on rock that is millions of years old, surrounded on one side by the ancient Pacific ocean, and the other by the Waianae mountain range, nearby my daughter who was created by a single cell each from my husband and I and created under one cell's own genetic instructions along with nutrients and cell signaling from within my body, is not necessarily true yoga. 

But I believe that yoga is everything and nothing. And the journey along the eight-limbed path is meant to be taken linearly and circularly and inevitably brought together all as one. The breath work (pranayama) that brought my awareness inward (pratyahara) that fueled my one pointed focus (dharana) on miraculous volvanic rock, erupted from hundreds of thousands of feet from within the depths of our planet that revolves majestically around our sun light years away, enabled me- my mind and body, not separate- to hold this asana. That's yoga.