Why Practice Yoga? What is Yoga? Is there more than meets the eyes?

Yoga is a universal spiritual practice that is meant to bring you closer to who you are.
It is meant to help you connect to the latent divine being within you.  It shows you overtime that there is an entire world within you that wishes to start growing and blossoming so you can become the spiritual being that you were meant to be.

Yoga teaches you to go inside or to become more aware and discover the truth that exist within each individuals.

Your temple is your physical body where you can worship the divine in complete privacy, free of rituals, ceremonies, free of worship of statues or god-men from the past, and judgements from others.

The Asanas (postures) prepare the body to cleanse, feel stronger, bring the mind to quietude and calmness, to become purer to receive the spiritual energies waiting to descend upon us at any time.

Yoga is an individual practice not a group thing. Although you may find yourself in a class with many other students, you quickly come to understand that it is about you and not your neighbor. It is not a competition with others but a competition with yourself to become a more accomplished and realized being.

Sometimes students are turned off by the spiritual aspect of yoga. As a teacher and practitioner of yoga how can I dissociate the spirituality within this discipline. To me it is impossible. Can you separate the scent of a rose from its petals?

The reason I went to yoga classes years ago was in the hope to find answers with my present dilemma in my life or relieve my mind of it incessant chatter or the anger I carried and couldn't dissociate from; it always came through for me. Of course I learned new poses, perfected the ones I knew, and challenged myself with difficult ones. I loved it and expected it too!

Everyone starts yoga for different reasons. Some have chronic back injuries that can't heal and yoga is their last hope. Some want to stretch, some have heard it is healthy for you, some are looking for answers about their lives, some are looking for social contact; whatever the reason, eventually we come to discover that yoga has a lot more to offer than just a good stretch.

Students are grateful that this was made available to them by teachers like me and that the principles of this practice was kept in its origins.

At the core of all spiritual endeavor there is a code of conduct that each one starts to implement in order to become more spiritual and receive more spirituality.

These are the yoga philosophy and when you implement them in your life they become a way of life, and not a philosophy or intellectual knowledge but a reality.

Yoga philosophy is being taught in yoga classes to give students a focus during practice and for some to contemplate over after practice and apply in their lives.

We are all looking for answers at one point or another in our lives. Digging deeper inside is what we are here to do. Discovering the spiritual person hiding in each of us is our true and ultimate journey in this world.

My personal practice is Surat Shabda Yoga, and I live it. I don't just read about it, I actuate it in my life to the best of my understanding and ability. When I teach an asana class I bring all that I have come to understand into that session, and it transpires in the way I teach. If I were to dissociate the two I would be two faced and dishonest. I wouldn't be able to do it. Impossible.

Leave your comments below and share your own experience on this subject.

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