Bruce “the Boomer” Dowd (Fox Business News): What are the principles of yoga?
Susan: Because yoga is a body, mind and spirit practice, everything is integrated. Our minds affect our bodies and our spirit; yoga practice takes you on a journey into yourself. It is a very personal practice and what you take away from it is what you choose to take away and what you are open to. For people who say they can’t do yoga because maybe they are bed ridden, or they are in a wheel chair, I would say if you are breathing, you can do yoga. There is a whole practice of yoga called pranayama, which is about the prana, the life force energy that is in our breath, and yama is a practice of learning to use and participate with the breath. There are different patterns of breathing that bring about different frames of mind. Asana is the actual physical form of the poses. My yoga teacher has said when you have mastered the poses, that is when the real yoga begins because then you are doing the yoga from the inside out, rather than trying to master a pose from the outside. When I teach yoga workshops, my goal is to teach as many of the poses as I can, because learning the poses and the alignment allows students to do their own practice from the inside out.