Читать книгу 20 MINUTES TO MASTER ... YOGA - Cheryl Isaacson - Страница 9

CHAPTER 1

WHAT IS YOGA?

NOT JUST KNOTS …

What do you think of when someone mentions yoga? People bending and stretching, balancing and twisting, in the classic poses now familiar to the health scene? Deep relaxation and mind control? Chanting and meditating and staring into candle flames? If so, then you are right on all counts – but you are only seeing part of the whole. The practices that we call ‘yoga’ today are just one small part of what is actually a many-sided, practical, life-enhancing discipline.

Yoga was originally part of the mystical wisdom of Indian philosophy, but today we mostly concentrate on the body postures, or asanas, with perhaps some breath control and a little meditation thrown in. The postures certainly help you to become fit and supple, but they are only one aspect of the complete way of life that yoga can bring.

Yoga also offers:

 practical techniques for living life healthily and holistically, from following the correct diet to deep breathing and body strengthening

 a complete code of ethics for daily life

 simple methods for relaxing and meditating

 postures for a toned, supple, healthy, strong body

 tried and tested ways to find profound personal peace and stability.

Yoga can affect your whole life and there are many different ways of applying it. It is not just for the young and fit, and – most importantly – you can start at any time. Yoga has something for a truly wide range of people, whatever the state of their mind and body.

YOGA’S SPIRITUAL PATH

The desire for spiritual experience has led many to look to the religious systems of the East. Yoga is, at heart, a spiritual path that offers powerful rituals and meditation techniques to help us enter other states of consciousness. People call this many different things: a spiritual sense, a connection with a greater power, a higher consciousness, even God. Whatever form it takes, it seems to be as important to human satisfaction now as it was 3,000 years ago.

Mystics and sages show us that spiritual bliss and extraordinary peace are possible. However, the closest most of us get to this is a flash of feeling ‘at one with the universe’. While this feeling may not last, it does open us up to a different state of being. If you want to achieve some peace of mind, or connect with a more spiritual part of yourself, then this is possible through yoga.

Yoga is the mystical religious philosophy of India.

CREATING BALANCE

Yoga creates a sense of balance – from offering practical advice on following the right diet to allowing you to calm the mind by consciously detaching from the stresses of everyday life. Even though it is thousands of years old, yoga can work wonders in present times.

YOGA’S PHILOSOPHICAL PATH

The ideas behind yoga are very closely linked to Indian philosophy. This is made up of many highly complex ideas, which are so much part of India’s hugely diverse religious tradition that the two are inseparable. There are six main branches of Indian philosophy, and yoga is one of these branches. Yoga represents the mystical tradition, and aims to bring about a union between the individual being and the universal consciousness. In fact, the word ‘yoga’ is most commonly translated as ‘union’.