Daily Quotes

Kurmasana (Tortoise Yoga Pose) is named for an animal that withdraws into its shell when startled or threatened. It’s not surprising, then, that when you take the physical shape of the tortoise in this pose, you will often experience an exquisite feeling of moving inward mentally—as though the world around you is moving out of focus as your inner world becomes more audible and clear.

When your attention moves inward like this, you experience pratyahara, or sense withdrawal, which is the fifth of the eight limbs of classical yoga that Patanjali describes in the Yoga Sutra. Pratyahara is the threshold to your inner world. Your mind becomes less reactive to the swirling distractions of the world around you, and as a result, you feel quiet and centered. Like the tortoise, you experience pratyahara in this pose by drawing the limbs of your perception—your eyes, ears, skin, nose, mouth, and consequently your mind—into the shell of the limitless landscape within you.

Life is strong and fragile. It's a paradox... It's both things, like quantum physics: It's a particle and a wave at the same time. It all exists all together. ~Joan Jett~

Masumi Muramatsu
Honolulu, HI, U.S.A
Posted Date : 16-07-2015
Credited to: http://www.yogajournal.com/article/practice-section/drawn-inside/
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