WHAT IS YOGA?
Yoga is learning to come back to oneself, it’s about knowing your limits and exploring your boundaries and about being truly comfortable in your own skin and knowing who you are. It’s about taking time to remember who you are, most of us lose touch of who we are due to the demands of fast pace rollercoaster lifestyles. From a physical perspective it’s about finding balance, getting rid of that off-balance feeling. Yoga helps you feel balanced, integrated, grounded and content. An Indian sage Pantanjali wrote the Yoga-Sutra, this was the first detailed text about yoga which was compiled 2500 years ago. He describes yoga as the cessation of the turning of the mind, the stilling of the mind.
The name Yoga comes from Sanskrit word ‘yuj’ and means to join, to unite or to connect, other meaning of ‘yuj’ is to centre one’s thoughts, to focus on oneself or to meditate deeply. The Yoga Sutra’s definition of yoga is that yoga is a state of mind. And states that quietening the mind is intangible though on the other hand a yoga pose is tangible, you can assess it by the alignment, the length of the stretch and the duration it can be held meaning it is much easier to aim for something that is tangable and then move on to something less tangible within the practice, the stilling of the mind.
As you open the body and mind with yoga postures and breathing you become receptive to the delightful and profound experience of inner stillness. While the mind starts wanders off to the past and future, the body is still in the present. Hatha yoga encourages awareness of the body, coming back to the body encourages the mind back to the present and worries and over-thinking ease off. This gives the individual stillness of mind, release of tension, worry and stress and feel a sense of connection, grounding and calm. It is a form of escapism and can be used as a go-to tool at any time. The great thing about yoga is that you can practice it anywhere, you can take it with you. You don’t need to have any equipment or specific clothing with you to practice.