One of the great challenges of teaching a yoga class in the U.S. lies in convincing students to check and/or suspend their almost instinctual need to express themselves in their poses and practice. Whether adding dance like swirls and twirling flourishes to the hands when positioning the arms, making snow angels in the sky when moving the arms from up to down, or wanting to sneak a peak in a nearby mirror to see how the pose 'looks', the modern practitioner has become intensely focused on the outward expression of the art. And this is debilitating to the profound depth and potential of yoga. Part of this slant toward expression is cultural. America is perhaps the most independently minded society in human history. Our notion of freedom sometimes morphs into a need to do whatever we want whenever we want - provided no overt harm is done to others along the way. Maybe it is just an ingrained sense that if we are not expressing, we must be suppressing, and we are trained from a very young age to express ourselves freely.

But the absence of expression does not necessarily equate with suppression. Rather, suspending the need for expression actually makes necessary space and quiet for the emergence of its essential compliment, impression - a place where the world and life and the results of our actions talk back to us. And it is this impressive quality of yoga that works to balance the more obvious expressive qualities of the practice, allowing the full power of yoga to surface. Both are essential.

Expression is, of course, more familiar to us. It is necessary and rudimentary to move our intelligence from inside to outside in an expression that positions the body in a particular pose with a specified intent and shape. Take triangle pose as an example: we move the intelligence out with action and will through the limbs and reach toward the periphery and shape of the pose. But if we hope to tap the true sustenance the pose offers, we cannot just keep pushing our effort and expression out and out and out. It is also essential to maintain a receptive sensitivity on the periphery of the pose. We need to pause at some point in our doing and allow the mind and body to receive what has been done. Through this receptivity, the intelligence can feel and perceive the impression of the pose - where is there pain, where is there space, how have my legs positioned the spine, how have my arms helped or hindered the freedom of that spine, how is the breath, how are the nerves, etc. Then based on that impression, the flow of the mind can move back inwardly in order to refine, adjust, integrate, and ultimately embody the pose as a state of being. Not a state of doing or presenting. It is the embodiment of a posture, not its appearance and expression, that churns and elicits a response from the deep waters of the practice.

Coming from the world of Iyengar yoga, I often hear criticism arguing that Iyengar teachers focus entirely too much energy on alignment, precision, and minute details of the postures. And if that precision is used and covered simply for precision's sake, then the criticism carries some merit. It points to the fact that individual Iyengar teachers fall into the same trap of focusing too much attention on expression, and too little on impression. However, individual teachers are not to be confused with the classic teachings of Mr. Iyengar himself. When B.K.S. Iyengar gives some fine detail about how to move a particular patch of skin from here to there, he does not stop once a student properly expresses the instruction. Surgically, he takes the concentrated outward flow of intelligence, then reverses the flow back inwardly to feel what happens as a result of the given instruction: what moved, what opened, how did the breath change, etc. A student's intelligence is taken in to out, out back in, left to right, right to left, forward and back, superficial to deep, deep to superficial in a continuous and flowing pattern of expression, impression, and refinement that does not end when the physical motion of a sequence or posture stops. The intelligence and the effects of the poses continue to move and arch and percolate in the nerves and cells and tissues of the body and mind for hours. Sometimes days.

This movement of intelligence is not, of course, exclusive to the Iyengar system. All authentic yoga practice seeks to generate a flow of intelligence that will shape and forge the mind and body into a fine point - a point from where the internal penetration of the art (clear vision, concentration, absorption) can take seed and begin to grow.

The practice of yoga carries an immense potential energy and power to culture and transform an individual's physical and mental well-being. But to tap this energy, one has to approach the art with some clarity and discretion. We, as practitioners, cannot hope to grow just by throwing our arms and legs about in a gestural expression and imitation of what yoga seems to look like. The poses and practice exist not just for the expression and exploration of our intelligence. They serve also to impress and feed experience and information back into us. In that process, we not only evolve as individuals, but we also involve and integrate the remaining unknown and disparate parts of the individual self into a single, efficient, and connected functioning whole.