A yoga has become very popular these days. It first came to America in the late 1800s when Swami Vivekananda, an Indian teacher and Yogi, gave a lecture on meditation in Chicago. Interest in yoga flourished in the 1960s when there was a surge of interest in Eastern philosophy. Today it has grown to more than 11 million practitioners in America with more joining and every day.
The yoga that people practice today tends to stress fitness and strength. These are fine goals for any practitioner of yoga, however it is only a part of what yoga is really about.
The path of yoga that has been followed for thousands of years is more about letting go of the external world in favor of the internal. Fitness and strength of body are encouraged because it is necessary for the path of union that yoga really is.
A primary emphasis of yoga is right livelihood, which is based on treating others well. The first precept of the first precept of yoga is non-injury. From non-injury all other codes of behavior are formed. A serious seeker of Truth restrains themselves from injuring another so that they can progress on their path.
In fact, how you treat others is the only real way to gauge spiritual growth. If you treat people better today than you did in the past, then you have grown spiritually.
This can only be measured by your personal standard. As we grow in our ability to treat others better our standard grows as well.
Other than restraining from injuring another, a true spiritual seeker will refrain from telling lies, taking anything that does not belong to them, covetousness, possessiveness, and squandering the sexual energy.
Observations are what a spiritual seeker does that will help them towards union with the divine. Purity of both body and mind, contentment, self-study, austerity, study of Truth, and giving of one’s Self to God are the five observances.
Another step on the path to yoga is restraint of the life energy. This is usually translated as breathing practices. The Sanskrit word prana is one of the most misunderstood words in the Sanskrit language. Prana is life energy. In Chinese is called Chi.
The air has molecules in it that are essential to life. Prana is the energy of the life force that can be found in the air and the molecules that make up. It is the energy potential that is found in all living things and as such, can be brought into the body.
Modern science says that it’s the molecules and atoms found in the air and the food that sustains life. The ancient yogis say that it is the life energy within the molecules and atoms that sustains life.
Yoga encourages the practice of collecting prana so that the energy can be used to reach for the Absolute. One of the ways to do this is with breathing practices. Another way to do that is to hold the energy in the body by restraining sexual activity, overeating, excess talking and any other activity that needlessly waists it.
One of the things that can be done with the life energy is asana practice. The word asana means to sit, to place, to remain, to abide. Asana is usually translated as postures which is an accurate description of the activity of the practice of asana. As with all things yogic, there is deep meaning behind this simple practice. Much more than just a great exercise with many benefits.
As one progresses on the path of yoga, deep states of meditation can occur. The door to the deepest meditation is withdraw of the sense organs which leads to introversion. This is a state in which the sense organs disconnect from the sense faculty.
This disconnection doesn’t mean that sensory input is not experienced, in fact there is a heightening of the sensory experience. But, there is a lack of involvement with that input that allows the seeker to begin to transcend the external as the attention goes inward.
The path of yoga has two distinct stages. The first is outlined in the five steps above. On the mundane (everyday world) level this stage mainly has to do with extending life and developing character. At the deepest level this stage takes the seeker to the brink of deathlessness. Scripture says that after completing this stage the seeker’s body ceases to age.
This first stage is called hatha yoga. Ha (pronounced like ho in hot) means sun. Tha (ta as in tub with a breath between the t and the short a sound) means moon.
The sun energy channel runs just to the right of the spine while the Moon energy channel travels along the left side. It is the merging of these two energy channels at the Sun Moon chakra (energy circle) at the third eye between the eyes, that signals the completion of hatha yoga. At this point all the energy channels up to the third eye are purified.
It is impossible to get across the whole of the path of yoga in such a short outline. Part two will complete the outline. Further exploration will follow in the future.