Yoga Beyond the Poses: The Practice of Attention

Part 1 of a short reflection series.

What first drew me to yoga was never the poses. It was how the practice made me feel, and the way my attention would gradually settle inward until I found myself resting in the present moment.

That experience began when I was thirteen, practicing along with a VHS tape in my childhood bedroom. At the time I didn’t think much about what yoga was supposed to look like. I was simply doing it because it felt good, moving and following along, and something about it felt grounding and absorbing in a way I didn’t yet have language for. Looking back now, that small beginning in my bedroom was a practice that has stayed with me for more than thirty years.

Later, as I began practicing in studios, the poses themselves started to take more of my attention. The shapes became something to work toward, something to refine. I loved the rhythm of repetition, the discipline of returning to the same shapes again and again and discovering that they were never quite the same. But even then, there were moments in practice when something deeper would quietly take over.

There were times when my focus would become so steady that everything else seemed to fade into the background. The room, the other people practicing, even the mirror would slowly dissolve from my awareness. It wasn’t that I was ignoring any of it, but that my attention had gathered so fully in one place that the external world softened on its own.

What I remember most from those years is not the poses themselves, but a quality of attention that would arise in the practice.

Instead of observing myself from the outside through the mirror, I began to experience the practice from the inside.

Often there was intensity present, not in a painful way, but a steady hum in the body. The shift came not from escaping that sensation, but from allowing my awareness to settle within it. When my attention steadied, the sensation reorganized itself and expanded rather than building into overwhelm. It became something I could inhabit.

The more I practiced, the more I realized that this absorption was what I loved most. The way comparison faded, the way external reference points quietly disappeared, and the way I could feel completely contained within my own experience.

At the time, I might have said I was practicing strength or flexibility. But looking back, what kept me devoted was the steadiness that appeared when my attention gathered fully in one place.

The poses were simply the form.
The real practice was the gathering of attention.

At least, that’s what it slowly began to feel like.

When I reflect, what feels most meaningful is not what the body could do, but what happened when the mind grew quiet enough for awareness to settle completely. Over time I realized that what I loved most about yoga was not the shape of the pose, but the moment when everything else disappeared. What felt most powerful was not only the strength and flexibility of the body, but the inner strength and flexibility of the mind.

That quality of presence still feels like the heart of my practice today, even though the way I practice has evolved over the years.

And now, as we move toward March and the light slowly begins to return, I find myself reflecting on that same shift. The way attention gathers inward and creates steadiness from the inside out.

That quality of attention is something I continue to explore in my own practice, and it has slowly shaped the way I teach as well. Inside Radiant Body this month we’ll be working with that same steady, uplifting energy through simple repeated practices, allowing attention to settle again and again until the practice begins to deepen on its own.

I’ll share more about that soon.

For now, I’ve simply been reflecting on those moments in practice when everything else quietly falls away, and how that quality of attention continues to shape the path ahead.

🤍Kristi