My first experience with yoga was Ashtanga Yoga, a system of  yoga that was brought into the modern world by Sri T. Krishnamacharya and more recently made popular by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois.    The one thing from years of practicing Ashtanga that has stayed with me is the idea of "just practice!".  Pattabhi is always quoted with "Do your practice and all is coming" and "99 percent practice, one percent theory".   I always loved hearing that.  Keep things simple by not over-analyzing and over-intellectualizing the experience.  Just show up (to your whatever it is that you do) and practice.  The learning, benefits, questions, answers, knowledge, everything else, will unfold over time.   But we have to do the actual work of consistently practicing first.

Some of us never make it to practice (define practice from this point on as any of the chi practices such as Longevity Breathing Yoga). Life gets in the way of our intentions.  Jobs, traffic, kids, bills, it's all there every day making it harder for us to carve out practice time.   But no matter how busy we are, finding even a little bit of time to dedicate to our practice can make a difference in our lives.  Even if we need to become more creative with managing our time, it's possible to set our intention to practice and show up for it.   Maybe we can wake up an hour earlier for practice, or use our lunch breaks.  Years ago, I used to schedule 15-30 minute meetings in the company conference room throughout the week. I would go in by myself, lock the door, and sit quietly and breathe.  Not the most complicated practice, but it was enough at the time to bring more relaxation and awareness into my life.  Nowadays life has gotten more hectic than ever and early mornings are all that's available to practice uninterrupted, so I wake up earlier and do my best to make it work.

Let's consider this idea of a daily practice when it comes to Longevity Breathing Yoga.  If we don't have time to practice the full basic set of postures (the beginners set may take anywhere from 1-2 hours to complete), and are only able to dedicate 15 minutes to the practice, that's still doable.  Those 15 minutes are better than absolutely nothing, especially if we can be completely present during that time (we may actually have a deeper practice than someone who practices for 2 hours who is not so present).  The focus could be on only one posture during that time.  Or the focus could solely be on the Longevity Breathing aspect of the set.  Eventually we'll add in an additional 15 minutes or an additional posture.  We can continue to add on until we've developed a time, place, and discipline of a daily personal practice.  

Eventually, with enough practice, we'll be able to embody Longevity Breathing Yoga all the time, 24 hours a day, as we learn to integrate our practice into our every breath and movement.  For now, let's start with a little time dedicated to it every week and allow it to grow from there.

Read about Energy Arts senior instructor Brian Cooper's take on the "Art of the Micro Practice".

~Ellen Pucciarelli
Do you have an experience or tip with your training that you would like to share on a future blog?  Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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