Definition
Yoga is the science of right living, intended to be incorporated in daily life. It works on all the aspects of the person: Physical, Mental, Vital, Emotional, Psychic & Spiritual.
The word Yoga means ‘Unity’ or ‘oneness’ and is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘Yuj’ which means ‘to join’. This unity or joining is described in spiritual terms as the union of the individual consciousness with the universal consciousness. On more practical level, Yoga is a means of balancing, harmonising the body, mind and emotions. This can be achieved through the practice of asanas, pranayama, mudra, bandha, shatkarma and meditation.
Understanding
Yoga aims at bringing the different bodily functions into perfect coordination. So that all the organs and systems of the whole body on the physical, mental and emotional levels works fine. Here, at Yoga School of Bharat, we are trying to educate people that yoga is not only about the physical exercise and limited to just the physical body. Yoga is all about the balance and coordination of physical and subtle body which starts with the mind. That is why our aim and slogan of starting this school is to emphasise on ‘Yoga for the Mind’. Only the healthy mind can keep your physical body healthy. Although, it affects on both side, sometimes the unhealthy body can disturb your mind and make it distracted which becomes unhealthy and you loose the control over the coordination of mind with body.
In a very simple way, Yoga is explained as an art of loving, learning and accepting your own self. If you start loving yourself, then you will start doing what you love or you will start loving what you do. Only if you are happy, cheerful and loving internally with yourself, then you can easily make anyone cheerful to make them feel better. So, just by start practicing yoga doesn’t really mean that you have to start performing asanas, meditation, etc. You just have to start following your passion/hobby or anything you love to do. Something where you don’t care about the time, can continue for longer durations irrespective of the situation, time, place or anything. In simple words, if you are doing something what you love without the time as constraint, whole heartedly and with full consciousness, then you are practicing yoga in purest form.
Ancient Scriptures
In many Patanjali shlokas, Upanishads, even Bhagwat Geeta, have given the concept of right diet, right intention, right actions can be useful for practicing yoga. There are many forms and practices related to yoga what we have discussed in many various topics in this website and videos. There are many different paths of living a healthy life and be liberated from the sufferings of your pain, out of which yoga is considered to be as the most popular path because of it’s practical implementations. Yoga is considered to be an important, useful and a pillar of Bharat Philosophies. We have given all these philosophies in detail where you can easily relate and learn about them.
There are many translations about the ancient books/scriptures related to yoga, but here we will only talk about the classical Patanjali Yoga where we will also discuss about the origin, classification, implementation of yoga with the modern times. There will also be a detailed myths and facts about the father of modern yoga – Sage Patanjali (Maharishi Patanjali). If this blog or the introduction of yoga has made you curious about learning even more, then you can surely browse more classes and blogs for deep learning.