Yoga

Yoga (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India. The word is associated with meditative practices in Buddhism and Hinduism. In Hinduism, it also refers to one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy, and to the goal toward which that school directs its practices. In Jainism it refers to the sum total of all activities—mental, verbal and physical.

Yoga And Soul
	Physical reality is only a fraction of all that is! In your search for happiness, you have been running away from the `Self', which is the real source of joy. Many a time, you find yourself stressed and ailing because you don't know your inner being, the Self.

This inner being , the Self, is our awareness. It is energy. It is the energy of Divine Love. All evolution and the manifestation of material energy are guided by the supreme energy of Divine Love. Normally, you do not know how powerful and thoughtful this unknown energy is. The silent working of awareness is so automatic, minute, dynamic, and precious that we take it for granted. After Self-realisation, this energy appears to us as silent throbbing vibrations flowing through our being, and you automatically come to know all there is to know and thus be Self Aware!

Spiritual yogic practices and systems deal with regulations and exercises, which help you (i.e. the sleeping soul) to wake up, discriminate between the real and the unreal, gradually leading your mind to firmly stabilise and merge in the soul thus "internalising the souls attention" on itself in lieu of expending energy on outer forms. Once fully awakened, the Energy (soul) realises Itself, and is freed automatically from the pangs of birth and death.

Yoga: The Beginning Stage of Yoga

When you first begin to practice yoga, the mind, like a child runs in different directions. For a while you may be able to stabilise your mind but the thoughts invariably get scattered. It is at this stage that you have to exercise conscious control and practice the art of 'pratyahaar'. There are some practitioners who can control and bring the mind quickly to focus without much effort due to an inner state of calmness. Once the mind is stabilised, it helps to fix one's attention and brings much peace. Even if the attention span is short, it at least helps control the mind and arrest its restlessness and constant thought-flux.

Yoga: The Advanced Stage of Yoga

"True happiness can be achieved only through a state of nothingness." The supreme aim of all yogic exercises is to elevate the soul to higher levels of consciousness by strengthening the mental faculties. Once the mind is strengthened and concentrated, it is easy to make it delve on itself and dissociate from ephemeral and perishable objects of the world and the senses. At this stage, external objects and sensory inputs do not make any impressions or leave any residues in the lake of the mind. The waters of this lake become calm and placid. The mind, thus, is totally focused on itself, one-pointed and impervious to external sensations. This stage can be easily understood by imagining the case of salt water in a tumbler. The salt is fully dissolved in water and there are no undissolved particles left. But the solution is not uniform in its composition. Still, there is no proper mixing as one homogenous solution, as the water has not been stirred.

Discover your breath

A major and important benefit you may notice with yoga practice is that you are more in touch with your breathing. Yoga poses are practiced in harmony with the breath. One of the residues of this constant concentration on breath is that students tend to pay more attention to their breath outside of class. Most students' report they are surprised to learn that they find themselves holding their breath frequently during the day in response to stress. By learning to notice their breath holding they can begin to break the habit. When one breathes easily throughout the day, less tension will accumulate in the body.

Free your thoughts

One of the most important things you can learn from a yoga class is that your thoughts have the ability to affect your overall contentment and health. During the deep relaxation pose ( savasana ), one systematically relaxes every part of the body, even suggesting that the brain itself is 'relaxed'. During conscious relaxation, thoughts are experienced more as energy, which is associated with the brain than as the sum total of who we are. We have thoughts, but those thoughts no longer take over our bodies and minds at large - triggering tension, anxiety or other responses. Yoga teaches us that consciousness and thoughts are not the same thing.

During relaxation we are able to let the thoughts flow through us without dancing away with them to the past or the future. We remain conscious, allowing the thoughts to come through us, but we learn not to interact with them. We can say to ourselves, "Oh, there's another thought of dinner, or of person 'X' or of fear about tomorrow's meeting." Then we can let go of that thought and return to the relaxation at hand. This is a meditative practice, which gradually over time allows us to 'dis-identify' with our thoughts. When thoughts are experienced just as thoughts, not as reality itself, then the path to freedom which yoga promises begins to unfold naturally. And that path is as sweet as a perfectly ripe mango.