Yoga, in general, is a
spiritual practice or discipline that helps the individual unify
his/her body, mind, and heart.
Yoga is a direct
experience of the vast interrelatedness of all life and of all
things. You will feel at peace at the end of a yoga class
because there is a natural realignment of your body which leads
to a natural realignment of your perception of life and of who
you are.
You will
need to develop discipline and there is
hard work involved
especially when you first begin.
Hatha
Yoga is the study and
practice of physical alignments
and
breath.
Yoga is
much more that
postural alignment
and
breathing.
If you stay with yoga
long enough, you may discover a "spiritual awakening" (for lack
of a better phrase.) You will find out that who you are, is not
just your body, and not just the conversations in your mind.
Through steady practice,
you will manifest less self-importance, less material
attachment, more capacity for joy, less judgmentalness, and more
tolerance toward others.
Yoga is about
transformation, not hamstrings, but along the way we have to
take care of them. This is not dogma, but a direct experience.
Yoga will open your eyes to things you have not experienced
before. It will take you beyond the mundane survival level and
into a whole new appreciation of life.
Genuine
yoga will change your life, your habits,
your body, your health,
your mind, your
breathing patterns,
your attitudes, your outlook. Yoga is about learning from direct
experience. You will develop wisdom of how your
body works most efficiently.
You will learn how your conscious and unconsious mind can either
support or harm you, and then later, a deeper wisodm naturally
gets revealed.
The benefits of Yoga
will come to
those who practice.
There are
many types of Yoga.
That which comes to mind first is
Hatha Yoga an
element of
Raja yoga,
yoga that deals mainly with
physical postures
and
breathing.
Karma Yoga
emphasizes spiritual practice to help the
individual unify body, mind, and heart through certain practices
in one’s daily life and work.
Bhakti Yoga,
a devotional form, generally encompasses chanting, reading of
scriptures and worship practices. In general, Yoga is any
practice that can turn the practitioner inward to find and
experience an individual’s spiritual essence, to realize or
awaken to his/her spiritual nature. Another type of yoga is
jnana yoga.
Each posture, or asana,
is held for a period of time and
synchronised with the breath.
Generally, a yoga session begins with gentle asanas and works up
to the more vigorous or challenging postures. A full yoga
session should exercise every part of the body and should
include
pranayama (breath control practices),
relaxation
and
meditation.
The different
postures or asanas
include:
