Exploring the roots, purpose, and transformative potential of yoga through the lens of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Each week, we dive into a teaching shared by yoga teacher Ann Schreppers, uncovering how ancient wisdom translates into modern practice and how yoga can become a living philosophy.
In this third part of our Yoga Philosophy series, Ann explores how Vinyasa yoga unites breath, movement, and awareness — transforming asana into a path toward presence and inner fire.
Sutra 1.49 — Śrutānumāna prajñābhyām anyaviṣayā viśeṣārthatvāt
“True wisdom arises from direct experience.”
The Union of Breath, Movement, and Awareness
Vinyasa yoga invites us to embody intention — to allow each breath and movement to express love, compassion, and truth. It is a practice of presence, where wisdom is not found in theory but in lived experience. As it’s in this body that we experience and explore our human reality.
Each time we step on the mat, we are given the chance to reconnect and to bring love to life as an active practice. To move from essence rather than expectation. To let the rhythm of the breath guide us back home.
When we practice in this way, movement becomes meditation. The breath carries us through resistance, teaching us to stay open even when the mind wants to close. To act from love, rather than react from fear.
Asana as a Tool for Liberation
Asana is often misunderstood as the goal of yoga, yet it is only a doorway. It invites us to explore where the body holds tension and how awareness can soften it. Each pose reveals both our habitual patterns of movement in body and mind as well as our potential for freedom in the practice and life.
It is not what we do, but the quality with which we do it that has the most potential to liberate us. Do we judge tension in body and/or mind or do we look at it with presence? Do we engage with challenge with encouragement and kindness or push or punish from dissatisfaction?
When we move with awareness, form becomes flow. The outer expression of the pose becomes less important than the inner connection it awakens. This way, the same pose can either liberate you from or entangle you with the patterns that prevent you from embodying your highest purpose.
Moving from Truth
To live Satya — truth — in our practice means to honor what the body and heart truly need. Some days that truth asks for stillness, others for strength. It really no longer matters what it looks like … It is all about our intrinsic process.
Compassionate listening becomes the practice…. to break free from reactivity. And this process of witnessing your patterns - especially the ones we’re not proud of- an opportunity to cultivate compassion. To close the gap of judgement between where you are and want to be with gentle encouragement and a commitment to show up in your current capacity.
Vinyāsa has the potential to be so much more than a sequence of poses. It becomes an intentional dialogue between body and soul, breath and awareness. A conversation of conscious effort to transform old patterns and stagnancy into intrinsic power and renewed possibility. And once you go through this process yourself, it becomes a natural extension into your surroundings. It’s all connected.
Freedom in Presence
The beauty of Vinyāsa lies in its constant reminder that life itself is movement. When we learn to flow with awareness, we no longer fight what is changing. We allow the practice — and life — to unfold moment by moment. Less control, more flow. We become open to the process.
Freedom is not found in escaping your reality, but in expanding in your capacity to be with it … To be present with sensations in poses and circumstances whether your mind likes them or not. You’re there, with deep breaths and you’re reminded of the choice you have as for how to act. So what will it be ? Repeat after me…
"Today I choose to be _______" (fill in)
Practice with Ann
Listen
Connect
Ann Schreppers is a lifelong bodyworker, and yoga teacher devoted to personal and collective transformation. Her journey began in classical ballet, where her love for movement and the human experience first took root. For over a decade, she has shared the gift of yoga and heartfelt leadership across the world, in communities in Central-America and Kenya, where she lives partly. Through her platform, Conscious Corner, Ann creates programs, retreats, and teacher trainings that weave together movement, mindfulness, and purpose. With an academic background in Public Policy, she is passionate about fostering well-being through structures of self-awareness and conscious living — inspiring others to reconnect with their inner truth and make an impact for people and the planet.
Instagram: @ann.schreppers
Website: consciouscorner.be
Upcoming retreats: consciouscorner.be/retreats
Upcoming trainings: consciouscorner.be/sacred-sequence-trainings
Learn more:
→ Part I: The Essence of Yoga Sutra
→ Part II: The Causes of Suffering and Energetic Awareness
→ Part IV: Practicing from the Heart
