So there you are, on your yoga mat -in Ardho Mukha Svanasana - the downward facing dog part of the day. Head down, tail up, feet and hands pressed toward the earth -  arms getting tired? (yes), spine long? (maybe), is the breath released and easeful perhaps?(ehh, well - sometimes), heels down onto the floor? (NO -  Arggghhh!) 

While the exact scene may not describe you, the general sentiment and experience is or has been familiar to most yogis at some point of their practice. Unfulfilled desires leading to frustrations, ones that are repeated in our lives day in and day out in many small and larger ways. Desire - it drives our lives, sets the agenda and decides the outcome. Some people will never be able to fully press their heels to the floor in Downward facing dog - bone structure will prevent that, and ultimately it doesn't matter anyway.

Work on the mat is a fine art between effort and surrender, energizing and releasing, just as it is in our daily life. Asana allows us to tune our body and minds to recognize when to act and when to just 'be'. Ego has other ideas and often wants to push, wants to experience energy, action, stretch and feel the rush of moving fluidly from pose to pose or sensation to sensation. Or it desperately pushes us to compare ourselves to a picture in a book - we tell ourselves that then and only then can we be happy with ourselves or our practice when we attain the experience of this or that particular asana. Upon reflection we often find that these moments have been happening due to desire, desire to repeat a previous enjoyable experience or desire to suppress something which made us feel bad or uncomfortable. Desire of itself is not a bad thing - in fact it is necessary to live and experience life. We desire to live, to form relationships, have sex and children (we all exist because of that one desire), help others and to grow within ourselves. Desire in one form or another drives the universe- it is pure potential seeking expression. When we get attached to our desires because we fear the opposite is when things start getting lop-sided, out of balance. We may have the desire but it is how we deal with that desire and whether we act upon it which is most telling. Not all desires are created equal - the problem being that it is so difficult to discern those that can further your growth from those that are neutral or that enmesh you more and more in confusion, conflict, or pain - the ones that simply arise from past habit. Yoga can help us realize how this works within ourselves and can offer practices to smooth things out -the tools of asana and meditation are but two.

To put it one way, Yoga in essence is about achieving balance, a form of unity. The key to fulfillment in the asanas is to let the poses be a vehicle, a tool to strengthen and transform the vessel that you've been given in this lifetime; to balance it, to calm and control it so that you can hold more energy and more light - so that there's more room for You inside. The balance poses can help us understand the major and subtle shifts required to maintain ourselves, this leads to focus and centering within where calmness reigns and calmness in turn leads to clearer understanding to enable us to manifest balanced outcomes.