YOGA
✨a physical, mental and spiritual practice✨
Yoga (Sanskrit: योग, lit. 'yoke' or 'union') is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India and aim to control (yoke) and still the mind, recognizing a detached witness-consciousness untouched by the mind (Chitta) and mundane suffering (Duḥkha). There is a wide variety of schools of yoga, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Traditional and modern yoga is practiced worldwide.
Goals of the Yoga Practice
The ultimate goals of yoga are stilling the mind and gaining insight, resting in detached awareness, and liberation (Moksha) from saṃsāra and duḥkha: a process (or discipline) leading to unity (Aikyam) with the divine (Brahman) or with one's self (Ātman). This goal varies by philosophical or theological system. In the classical Ashtanga yoga system, the ultimate goal of yoga is to achieve samadhi and remain in that state as pure awareness.
Ashtanga - The Eight Limbs of Yoga
Patanjali set out his definition of yoga in the Yoga Sutras as having eight limbs (अष्टाङ्ग aṣṭ āṅga):
- yama (abstinences)
- niyama (observances)
- asana (yoga postures)
- pranayama (breath control)
- pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses)
- dharana (concentration)
- dhyana (meditation)
- samadhi (absorption)
The eight limbs form a sequence from the outer to the inner. The posture, asana, must be steady and comfortable for a long time, in order for the yogi to practice the limbs from pranayama until samadhi. The main aim is kaivalya, discernment of Purusha, the witness-conscious, as separate from prakriti, the cognitive apparatus, and disentanglement of Purusha from its muddled defilements.
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"Yoga is not to be performed; it is to be lived. Yoga doesn’t care about
what you have been; it cares about the person you are becoming."
