At some point the asana practice becomes less about the physical body, and more of an experience of the living energy, the prana or 気. This life force is all pervasive and its strength is boundless.
If you do not obtain this experience the practice remains nothing more than exercise, which may sometimes seem like a chore. This will often result in you not feeling like doing the practice, or doing the practice half-heartedly, or with your mind elsewhere, which is usually how we get injured.
Self-awareness is where the asana practice is leading you, but this awareness has to be cultivated just like when you started learning the postures and you had to develop the physical awareness just to be able to make the shapes with your bodies.
As advanced students and as instructors we most be clear in how we relate to the asanas, as tools to learn about and understand ourselves more fully and deeply, not merely at the surface level of physical appearance.
understanding and teaching alignment with a primary focus on creating an experience of free flow of breath energy. we will practice providing assistance to facilitate a more stable (stira) and comfortable (sukham) expression of the postures.