Awareness and the focus on breathing differentiate some yoga stretches from similar looking exercises you might get in conventional physical therapy. In yoga asana, your attention is focused on what you are doing and on how it affects sensations in your body and mind. Most PT exercises in contrast are usually done fairly mindlessly and mechanically, perhaps even while watching television. When you do PT exercises without awareness, without turning in, they are exactly the same thing every day — rote and uninteresting. No wonder so many people stop doing them.
Yoga done right gets more interesting over time. Good yoga asana don’t just improve the functioning of the physical body, they engage your mind.
Bringing your attention to what you are doing, and precisely how you are doing it, builds the ability to feel your body’s signals.
Yoga as Medicine
Chapter 11 “Back Pain”
featuring Judith Hanson Lasater’s method:)A holistic approach … When taught from early childhood – self-awareness vis-a-vis any environment, i.e., adapting to any environment … that is a life-long skill.