― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Murakami wasn't talking about yoga here, but he did a hell of a job evoking it. If you're doing a practice like Ashtanga or Sivananda that encourages structure, how do you find freedom? It's easy for me at Laughing Lotus (where variation within structure is the name of the game), but I love Ashtanga places too, and I'd like to bring my bodily creativity into the time-tested pattern of asana.
One way to do this is through breath. Breathing literally (yes, literally) makes the yoga yours. It brings it into your muscles and sinews. Deepening your breath can deepen the pose. It will deepen the pose, whether it does so physically or not. Your energy body will be shaped differently, and your chakras will open. (More on this later - I'm delving into some amazing chakra books and am about ready to shape that knowledge into some of my writings).
What about personal practice? How can something that you do daily - that may frustrate or annoy you just as it energizes and lifts you - become part of you without turning you into a robot? My personal practice used to be fairly robotic. I focused more on the counting of the breath than the feeling of the pose. I didn't listen to my body when it requested modifications or props (and if you're not careful, friends, it will request them more vociferously and rudely than you'd probably like). Now, I try to think more globally. I give myself a maha pose to work up to. I focus on a chakra. Really, what I'm doing is bringing my favorite (or most challenging) moments of my yoga classes home, and making them part of me where nobody can see.
What about Other Things Than Yoga? I'm about to dive back in to academia, which doesn't always encourage the kind of creativity you might think.
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