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If you are asking someone to define yoga, you might as well be asking the person to measure the ocean with a pitcher! There are numerous facets of yoga. Yoga is supposed to provide you with good health, joy and happiness. What indeed is this happiness? It is such a baffling, most difficult to achieve state.
They say:
Sages meditated for ages,
Wise men wrote millions of pages,
About joy and happiness,
That has eluded mankind in the known human history,
What a profound mystery!
Yet, the relentless pursuit of mankind to seek happiness continues and Yoga is one of the important routes to achieve it.
Yoga is derived from the Sanskrit term Yug. This word literally means to yoke. Among the many definitions of yoga, an interesting one states that efficiency in work is yoga. Here, work means any type of work. What you do is not important. How you do, what you do is important. Any action should be carried out without the motivation of reward.
Sage Patanjali of India is the founder and father of yoga. He was a physician, philosopher and a grammarian. Earlier, many thinkers dismissed the revelations and writings of the Sages. They had no laboratories to test and conduct any experiments. They had no methods to prove what they believed. How can we accept that which is beyond the scope of verification? This is the argument of the mind-level thinkers.
Your mind can experience and explain only things that are apparent to your mind. You need to cross the mind barrier to pursue the path of truth- pursue the path of yoga. Remember that the Sages who lived a simple life in forests and who ate fruits and vegetables for their subsistence had no place in their lives for falsehood. They had no business expansion plans. They were not competitors to anyone. The spiritual level teachings related to yoga have to be understood in this context.
Patanjali lived around the period of 3000 B.C. His book on yoga, Patanjali Yoga Sutras is renowned.
It deals with the methods to realize the Self. The man, to experience real happiness, has to free himself from the fetters of the mind. The mind bird has to be released from the cage. His yoga sutras also explain the methods of regulated breathing that help to reach the level of concentration.
Study of this spiritual literature purifies the mind and surrenders the ego for the march towards divinity. It is a threefold attempt. Firstly, the body needs to be strengthened and purified through yoga asanas and the breathing exercises. Secondly, the mind needs to be cleansed of thoughts related to desire, in order to prepare it for higher flights. Thirdly, spirituality will lead you to the threshold of divinity.
The Yoga of Patanjali comprises of eight limbs, popularly known as Ashtanga Yoga. They are, Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. The level of truth to be achieved as per yoga is not opportunistic. Your thought, word and deed are one. They all live in one room. Speak the truth and speak it pleasantly, in a way that is agreeable to others.
With the commencement of the yoga principles and practices, you are igniting the light missile within you. This light missile is not subject to any range. As it penetrates deeper and deeper, you discover more and more about yourself and thus you become happier. This missile is not meant for destruction, it is meant to achieve constructive dynamism.
Yoga gives a new meaning to our life, and provides us with the total, not the partial meaning of life. Rather, it is an integrated approach towards a complete life of bliss.
Hatha Yoga is another important Branch of Yoga. It has been divided into seven parts. These are Bodily purification, Asanas, Mudras, Pratyahara, Pranayama, Dhyana and Samadhi. Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga are the other important branches.
Regular practice of yoga results in improvement in your standard of living and the quality of life. Yoga is the universal remedy for all types of diseases. This is just not an over-generalization. As you study more about yoga and practice in the regular way, the benefits will be obvious.
The real objective of yoga is not renunciation of action; it is proper participation in action. It aims towards molding and creating a dynamic individual besides providing various health benefits!
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