The biggest task in my job as a yoga instructor and business owner is to convince people that yoga is not necessarily about bending yourself into a pretzel. It is about calming the mind and opening pathways in the body so that energy may flow more freely and creating space for desires, by our choice, to manifest.

Bliss yoga is a spinal-opening experience. It is rooted in the premise that all tension originates in the central nervous system—from the brain stem down through the spinal column to the sacral nerve plexus. This practice of yoga is based in the theory that by releasing the origin of tension, you can release tension and its associated emotional ties in every part of the body. It is a supremely relaxing, meditative class, where deep opening around the spine can occur.

This may sound intimidating, but we encourage creating support wherever needed. So, for example, if you are in a twist lying on your back, and your knees don't come all the way to the ground while the opposite shoulder is on the ground, then you would place a rolled blanket under or between your knees. Or if you are folding forward in a forward bend, then you could roll up a blanket between your chest and your legs. It is similar to when you are making a difficult life decision, such as a job or partner choice, you tend to make the choice that your family and friends support you in most. So if your body is supported when you are in a difficult position, then it will be able to relax more deeply and you will be able to breathe more easily. In this way, you can see the way you treat your body in a particular posture as a reflection or mirror of how you treat your friends or life situations.

The breath is an important factor in all yoga practices. Let's take a look at how the breath functions. If you are involved in a traumatic experience, which simple daily stresses can be, what's the first thing that happens? Your breath stops momentarily or longer. You gasp and hold your breath in. This seals the traumatic experience into whatever region of your body that you typically hold tensions. If you experience a sexual trauma, you will hold tensions in your root chakra. (A chakra is an energy center.) If you experience heartbreak, you will hold tension around your heart, from the front, which will collapse your shoulders, or from the back, which will create pain between the shoulder blades. If you experience a demeaning moment, one that affects your self confidence, you will feel pain around your solar plexus and its related regions, such as your digestion: the stomach and so forth.

If you are able to release the breath, you release the trauma. So yoga is important in that it brings up the tension by showing pain—from where the original tension was sealed—to the mind, and then it is up to you to breathe! Then you are able to exhale the intensity of the traumatic experience, thus releasing it from your body.

I recommend Bliss yoga for everyone because it is great for beginners to become familiar with the poses, and it is also a deep spinal release and very meditative, so it is great for the advanced Ashtangi or Bikrams adept as well, because it encourages the practitioner to not be so concentrated on perfection, but rather on the experience of being 100% in the present moment.

Bliss yoga is so aptly named because it is not Torture yoga. It is about giving yourself permission to experience bliss and to see what you are capable of if your body isn't complaining horribly every step of the way. It is about experiencing each moment as fully as possible without attachment to what you think it should be like, or what you see in the Yoga Journal, and just being with what is. It is not about aspiring, but rather inspiring. Bliss yoga is aptly named because it just is.