Most everyone has heard of yoga, but not everyone really understands what it’s all about. The first thing most people think about is sitting around in a circle meditating and chanting then doing poses that make absolutely no sense.
Some have been led to believe that yoga is some sort of cult – a religious thing. Something that you have to buy into and give up everything that you believe in but that simply isn’t so.
Yoga isn’t religious per say, because you can keep whatever faith you have, but if you choose to you can make it a religious experience with whatever spiritual being you decide.
That’s not yoga at all. While it does incorporate some meditating and mindfulness with its breathing exercises, and does have a lot of different poses, all of those things go together and when you know a little more about yoga, you’ll know that the poses really do have meaning. They have a lot of meaning.
There are many different forms of yoga and every one of those isn’t right for every person. When starting out it’s good to try different types of yoga and figure out what works the best for you and your body. But, before you even think about that, let’s answer the question about what is yoga, really?
Yoga is so much more than just an exercise program. It isn’t all about stretching and moving from one pose to another. It isn’t just about breathing and standing on your head.
It isn’t just about becoming more flexible and getting in touch with your inner self. It isn’t just about connecting with nature and increasing your spiritual awareness. As a matter of fact, it is all of those things, not just one of them.
With yoga, we learn to explore ourselves and the world around us and we do it with much more awareness and wisdom. Yoga helps us to look back at our life and get rid of all of the baggage that we’ve been carrying around from the past.
We learn to forgive others and most importantly, to forgive ourselves for things that might still affect our thought process or how we feel or view life.
Yoga allows us to look at our future and decide what it is we want out of life and how to go about getting it. We learn to be more accepting of ourselves and of others which can lead to a much more harmonious life for everyone.
Yoga breaks down the conditions that we’ve been taught and teaches us that we have been misled about a lot of things and it’s time to break free and be true to who we are; completely and totally.
Yoga combines exercise, diet, mindfulness, lifestyle choices, and nurturing relationships making your life full and complete in all areas of your life. To most people none of this yoga stuff doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but when you begin to actually practice yoga then it comes together and makes all of the sense in the world.
When you begin practicing yoga you start to become more aware of yourself and your body’s needs. Once this happens you will start to crave a better diet in your life. You won’t want to gorge on all of that sugar and processed foods.
You will want to eat healthy so you can keep your body happy and continue to grow and change. Sometimes that’s all it takes for people to realize that their body really is a temple and should be treated as such. Putting good food into it will give it the energy you need to do the best you can do in every part of your life.
The main goal of yoga is to bring the worldly self and the higher consciousness together; a union of such so that all things fall together in your life. It takes a while to catch on to this process if you aren’t familiar with it, but in time, it does all come together and before long you will feel it all work together in your life.
You may start practicing yoga for the health benefits. You might want to lose weight or sculpt the muscles you already have. You might want to have some kind of exercise routine in your life.
You might start practicing yoga because you feel a little lost in your life and you want to get back in touch with your spiritual side. Or you might want to work your way toward some meditation.
No matter what the reason is that you start it, you may never uncover all that yoga has to offer, but in order to even think about it, you have to take that first step and start. If you don’t start practicing, you will never know what a wonderful experience it can truly be for you.
Different goals for different people, but in the end, all of it works together to make you a happy, healthy, relaxed individual.
