Yoga posture practice is a process of re-education into integration. One in which learned patterns are relinquished in order to allow the inherent integrity of the human body, and its intrinsic unity with mind and spirit, to resurface freely and fully. Human movement is by design open ended: we are the most mobile life form nature has produced. Yet at the same time the specifics of our structural design have been developed over 500 million years of trial and error.

Human mobility is based on over 200 joints. Each of which is an articulation of connective tissue between adjacent bones. Each of which supports not only specific kinds of movements, but at the same time the overall stability of the body as it moves and acts. Joints therefore contribute to both movement and stability. When a joint becomes subject to too much pressure it loses its mobility. When it becomes subject to too much extension it loses its stability. While modern life deeply restricts joint mobility, yoga postures practiced with an emphasis on flexibility can undermine stability.

The human structure, then, requires a balance between stability and mobility. This balance is almost always compromised in modern life. The overt purpose of yoga posture practice is to recover it. Its potential is encoded into our DNA and needs only be given permission and space to express itself. This takes training, or practice. It is not a process of accumulating and applying anatomical information. It is a matter of sensitive physical enquiry into the effects of movement on the joints. Enquiry that is based on feeling the sensations in joints and muscles. Sensations that speak, through the pain-pleasure mechanism, from the inherent integrity of the body, which is always asking us to accommodate its need for nourishment and expression.

Becoming intimate with sensation we can respond to the wisdom of our body and accommodate its intrinsic design for movement and action. Then muscles are able to recalibrate themselves harmoniously, according to their innate relationships, and joints become stable and free. If, on the other hand, we base our practice on targeting particular muscles to lengthen or strengthen, or specific joints to open and loosen, we will not be developing intimacy with our bodies, though we may well be developing flexibility and strength. Only through intimacy with the innate mechanism of the body can reintegration take place. This is true for reintegration of body and mind, as much as it is for muscle and bone.

The possibility of our bodies expressing themselves from their inherent integrity has been limited by the habits of a lifetime. We need therefore to take concrete steps to release that possibility. This we can do in the way that we approach our practice. In the way that we articulate each body part in relation to the others. We need to apply the dynamics of integrity to our practice. Only then can the inherent integrity of our body express itself freely through those very same dynamics. This means that what is innate, but obscured by habit, must be replicated through intent until eventually that intention is no longer required and the genetically embodied dynamics of integrity express themselves spontaneously. Only then can we truly enjoy the deep delight of practice. Only then can we surrender to, and be deeply satisfied by, the flow of sensation, rhythm and awareness within us.

The dynamics of integrity can be simplified as seven principles. These principles are at the same time the principles of yoga posture practice and of the inherent integrity of the body. They are organic, innate and pertinent to the natural functioning of the human body, and all forms of life, as much as they are to the practice of yoga postures. They are applicable and necessary to all postures without exception and their use can render quantified knowledge as irrelevant as it is unwieldy, and eliminate the need for specific anatomical and structural knowledge beyond that of the posture's shape.

All of the seven functional principles are contained within the first. A deep sensitivity to action and movement within the body will reveal them. Each part of the body (and the body as a whole), always seeks the greatest stability and freedom of action and movement. This means that, given the limitations imposed by shape, action and movement, the joints always establish as much stable release as possible, the body parts always enter into the most effective relationship possible. These possibilities are undermined and limited by habituated misuse of the body. Misuse that arises partly through childhood imitation, but mostly through the insensitive pursuit of cultural aims. This obscures the natural functioning of the inherent integrity of the body. The fundamental and indispensable function of yoga posture practice is to re-establish movement and action in the dynamics of integrity.