Yoga for most of us is a journey towards increased awareness and acceptance of the way things are. But letting go of our future-focused, goal-oriented mindset is a long journey. Experiencing a moment of full awareness in at least some yoga poses some of the time is a big step in the right direction. But when the poses themselves become mini-destinations along your path, you have reached an impasse on your journey that requires a new approach. Start focusing on the spaces between the poses, the transitions. Start to really focus on the journey, not the destination.

Move away from the mindset of seeing your practice as a series of poses to perfect. Instead, focus on maintaining your awareness on the present moment throughout your practice. Notice how you tend to be more present in a challenging pose. Notice how your awareness collapses when you transition between poses because your mind races ahead to the next challenging pose. Then start to make the moments of transition count just as much as the moment in which you nail a particularly challenging pose. Be here, now, especially in the moments that don’t seem important.

In addition to doing wonders for your awareness, focusing on the transitions—especially the transitions *out* of difficult poses—will also reduce your chance of injury. The easiest time to lose awareness is while coming out of a challenging pose. As you breathe a sigh of relief,  your mind races ahead to being able to relax in an easier pose. That is one of the most common moments for people to get injured. Not while *in* the difficult pose, where the difficulty itself keeps you focused, but when you think it’s over and your puppy mind dashes off into the future, leaving your body in the lurch.

Try it now

Get up off your chair and do the first four standing poses of sun salutations four times. (Do them right here, without a yoga mat, in your web-surfing clothes.) Do the poses the way you normally do them, and notice what body parts you are focusing on. Return to Mountain Pose (Tadasana), and notice how you feel.

Then bring your awareness to your breath, noticing how your breath creates movement in your body. Notice how each inhale encourages your breastbone to float up and your arms to rotate out. Notice how each exhale invites you quite naturally into a gentle forward bend. After a few rounds of breath, with a deep inhale allow your arms to float up almost without effort. Feel how the arm movement simply emerges from the breath. Continue by exhaling into a forward bend. Then inhale halfway up, exhale back down, inhale your arms back up, and exhale back to Mountain Pose. Repeat the sequence three times and turn it into one continuous movement, instead of a series of separate poses, separated by daydreaming. Return to Tadasana and notice how you feel now. Do you feel different? If so, how?

Yoga teacher Richard Freeman likes to say that there are thousands of yoga poses. It’s just that most of them haven’t been named yet. Make each and every moment count, the way you make the moments count you spend in a crown pose. Even if you are just transitioning. *Especially* if you are ‘just’ transitioning. Slow each movement down to take as long as the corresponding breath, and link each movement as seamlessly to the next as you link each exhale to the preceding inhale. Make each movement, each moment, deliberate and delicious. Begin to notice how this shift towards the journey, and away from your goals, your destinations, quiets your mind. Notice how focusing on the journey dramatically increases your sense of wellbeing, and your sense of joy.

PS: Click here to watch a video of what focusing on the journey looks like in the first part of Sun Salutations.