10 Things to know about Yoga

I got these fabulous notes from a friend & an expert in Ashtanga Yoga, a teacher and I will share them in parts as a series on Yoga and Meditation

1. Yoga is entirely concerned with the Mind (which is not the brain). The mind can be your best friend or enemy, can bind you to this world or liberate.

2. Yoga dissects the mind and presents every dimension and it needs to be looked as a science and not an abstract philosophy

3. Practice of Yoga takes the mind from a habitually distracted state to a habitually attentive state

4. Yoga is not limited to a set of exercises on a mat and certainly does not belong to one religion or nation

5. Yoga etymologically goes to the root word of “union” or “joining”.

6. Patanjali Yoga (196 sutras) is seen as the most authoritative text and traces back to 300 BCE

7. Yoga is not a study in reflection and prose but a series of steps as a discipline and habit to bring the wandering mind to one single place.

8. Yoga works with Prana (energy) and it is always best done under supervision exactly like high intensity exercising. It should not be taken lightly.

9. According to Sankhya and Yoga, our “inner” world of thoughts, feeling and imagination parallels the structure of the cosmos. Understand your inner self and you would understand the cosmos.

10. The path of yoga has 8 steps. It is linear in some form as mastery over one level helps in moving to another. Hence the word “Ashtanga” (8 limbed)