Often when I am talking to someone about my practice, I’ll serendipitously say something that I really like. While pondering my dharma talk for my students this week, I once again found myself redefining what yoga means to me. The statement that I settled on was:

“Yoga is a process of intentional self-regulation from one moment to the next.”

This pretty much sums up the “yoke” part of yoga for me in a nutshell. The practice is about self-observation, but it’s also, at this stage for me, about self-regulation. It’s about watching the mind and choosing what thoughts are relevant and constraining those that aren’t. Letting go of useless complaining and negativity and coming back to what is required. It’s about watching the body and doing just enough to make the asana light, clean, sharp, tight and discard the rest.

Like a valve, we can use the practice to regulate our energy, our breath and the flow of energy in and out of the body and mind. The pressure that get’s created by our “reigning ourselves in” results in extra energy. And that act of will that might initially seem like something that constrains us is actually one of the keys to true liberation: discipline.