Taoist Yoga is not "yet another" brand name of Yoga postures, it is a set of concepts that describe the recurrent energy patterns in all things. Taoist concepts can be used to describe the universe or the human body, clouds or thoughts, and all forms of Yoga.

A Taoist analysis of Yoga emphasizes the critical difference between the Yin and Yang tissues of the body. Muscles and blood are Yang, connective tissues and joints are Yin. Yin and Yang tissues do not respond to training in the same way and a student’s practice becomes more effective when the difference is understood.

Most forms of Yoga practiced today are Yang, they emphasize muscular movement and contraction. By contrast Yin Yoga targets the connective tissue of the hips, pelvis and lower spine. Yin postures are held three to five to ten minutes at a time. This type of practice complements the more muscular styles of Yoga and is a great aid for learning to sit in meditation.

"Yin practice takes you deeper into where you are, not out to where you think you should be," Sarah notes. "This approach challenges us to rethink what asana is about. It marries meditation and asana into a very deep practice. Some people, especially beginners, are not interested in or willing to do this -to sit inside their discomfort and just watch their reactions instead of trying to fix or change the pose. Yin yoga challenges you to sit in the pure presence of awareness. It's hard in a different way than active asana practice, but in a way that's more profound and satisfying as well as more beneficial to the deeper tissues."

If all your actions are based on the pursuit of happiness, why is it that so many things you do yield anything but happiness?

Life dances and you have to dance with it, whether it is taking you on a wonderful ride or is stepping on your toes. This is the necessary price and transcendent gift of being incarnate—alive in a body. But it is just life dancing. Life will move you in the rhythm and direction of its own nature. Each moment is a fresh moment in the dance, and if you are lost in clinging to the past or clinging to your hopes or fears of the future, you are not present for the dance.

To practice nonclinging does not mean forsaking what you value—that would be indifference. Instead, it means practicing nonattachment to outcome. There is a subtle distinction between indifference and nonattachment, and it is crucial to understand this distinction if you are to have genuine happiness in your life. If you are indifferent, you have no value base—you literally don't care how life unfolds. This is cynicism disguised as "cool" or karmic apathy. Nonattachment means that you act from your values but are not fixated on the outcome. This perspective is taught in most spiritual traditions.

Absolutely never bring a cellphone or pager into a yoga class.
This doesn't mean turn off the ringer, because sooner or later you will forget. Leave it in your car. If you can't be out of touch for an hour and a half, this is indicative of an imbalance in your life. Remember, 90% of stress is self-induced.

The praxis of maitri is one path that can lead yogis/yoginis from feelings of deep unworth and self-hatred to ahimsa, through a practice of befriending ourselves. Maitri is usually defined as friendliness or friendship(3). Patanjali says that maitri, along with karuna (compassion) and mudita (gladness) and upeksha (equanimity) allow our mental modifications (chitta vritti) to abate (I.33) and our journey of yoga to unfold. At a meditation retreat I attended a couple of months ago, American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron suggested that maitri is more accurately translated as "loving-kindness," since we don’t really have an exact word in English which is equivalent to maitri (which, I think, is rather telling).

The practice of maitri in yoga leads us from an attitude of what I call, "should-asana", where yoga is purely a goal-oriented activity, where we simply force ourselves to "master" poses, thus doing violence towards ourselves in thought, emotion, and action. In yoga, the practice of maitri can be a path to loving ourselves fully by befriending our very complicated nature warts and glory and all. In our asanas, in our pranayama practice, in our meditation time, to show maitri to ourselves is, in a sense, to be to ourselves as we would imagine the Source of All Life is to everyone, and to care for ourselves with all the tenderness that each soul needs. With curiosity instead of condemnation, and inquisitiveness instead of judgement, in maitri we embody the Brahman for our own hurting selves. We embody love, not as something "out there," but as a quality of being, where maitri becomes not necessarily something we do, rather as something we are and something we choose to let come forth in trust.

Go study with people who know. Parrot them; first learn what they have, then go find your own practice. Do what you remember from class, not even so much what you've been told to do. Do what you remember from class, after a while your body will tell you more than your brain will.