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What Is Yoga?
Mia B. Taylor
President
Yoga Learning Center
Yoga is an Indian spiritual tradition that was developed over 6,000 years ago. The Sanskrit word "Yoga" loosely translated means "yoke", "union", or "balance." Yoga seeks to unify the various aspects of our being, by means of physical postures (asana), breath work (pranayama) and meditation to bring about a grounded feeling of well-being and contentment.
Although Western Yoga has taken many different forms, the core
principle behind all forms of traditional and authentic yoga is
to discover our inner freedom and liberation.
The Yogic tradition states that our inherent nature is blissful,
boundless and free. But through the course of our daily lives, we
lose that inborn nature by attaching ourselves to various objects,
ideas and hopes that can make us feel miserable, inferior, or undeserving.
Yoga seeks to bring balance back into our lives, by uncovering our
inherent right to be happy, and on a deeper level, liberated.
Here in the West, most people have learned to associate Yoga with the latest fitness trend. While the health benefits of yoga are very real and effectual, Yoga is more about the mind than the body. It is by learning to relax the mind through the use of physical posture that we take the first steps toward realizing our true self.
Yoga is a discipline. This means that the search for our inner freedom doesn't happen overnight. It takes dedication to achieve this. But each time we devote ourselves to the practice, more and more we come closer to our natural state of being, which is pure happiness. When we are happy and content in the mind, secure within our inner world, then everything else in our lives unfolds with a renewed state of ease.
