Yoga union of body, mind and spirit.
This is a philosophy of life that is also able to create a healthy body and mind.
You need to correctly assess your capabilities and your real level of development. Remember that progress is your own business. There is no need to compare your capabilities with the capabilities of other yoga practitioners.
Morality is the basic law on which a person relies in his behavior. It is very important where this law comes from: from outside or from within.
Morality coming from outside prescribes a person what to do and what not to do. But as long as diseases live in a person’s mind, addictions, prescriptions and prohibitions will only fuel them. Sooner or later, “the dam will break through” and a person will “sin.”
The moral found inside is based on love as a simple and natural state of pure consciousness. And it is found through liberation from the misconceptions of the mind, balancing energies and growing up the Spirit. The value of such morality is much higher than the morality dictated by external authority.
If a person does not have inner harmony and unbalanced energies are raging in him, it is useless to teach him to love and be tolerant from the mind. He will still be aggressive as long as the source of aggression lives in him. So far, there are compressed springs of unexcreted energies of delusion in his mind. Therefore, it is necessary to strive to eliminate the roots of this spiritual disease by balancing energies. And to do this, apply real stabilizing exercises, not moral teachings of external morality.
It is necessary to influence not the investigation, but the cause. Therefore, for the real development of true morality, the Yoga Tradition prefers purification and balancing of consciousness.
Yoga practice
The practice of hatha yoga techniques becomes a means of achieving a state of yoga only if a number of conditions that determine the lifestyle of the practitioner are met. Without fulfilling these conditions, when consciousness moves to a higher level of functioning, the practitioner’s body is destroyed due to excessive intensity of transition processes.
Proper nutrition, physical and mental health and psychoenergetic impeccability – these are the above-mentioned conditions. With a sufficiently intensive correct practice of technical methods, the lifestyle itself comes into line with the necessary conditions. Over time, the practitioner begins to feel what kind of food is suitable for him, which is not. Increasing the level of training, saturation of the energy structure with energy, its adjustment and functional optimization lead the body into a state of health, and everything that does not correspond to the principles of psychoenergetic impeccability simply loses interest.
The basic principles of impeccability are represented by five principles of the pit – five restrictions – and five principles of Niyama – five rules.
The first two stages: Yama and Niyama
A pit is a practice used to exclude the possibility of wrong, harmful or restless behavior. They create the basis for proper life, peace and harmony – both social and personal. Thanks to these practices, yoga provides a simple model of self-discipline that eradicates problems arising from excessive material needs that exist in real life. It provides us with fair ethical laws of yoga teachers and Ayurvedic doctors.
Five pits:
• Ahimsa – non-harm.
– Satya – truthfulness, or impergence.
– Brahmacharya – proper use of sexual energy.
• Astaya – non-participation in theft.
– Aparigraha – greed.
The first is Ahimsa, or not causing harm. The basis of any true wisdom or healthy lifestyle is the desire not to harm any living being – not only a person, but any creation, including stones! Remember that by harming others – mentally, emotionally or by your actions – you always harm yourself. Ahimsa means the need to avoid any actions that may cause harm and support those actions that reduce it or protect it from injustice and harm.
Satya – truthfulness in thoughts and behavior is necessary for clarity and peace of mind and for creating social interactions to establish trust and exclude conflicts. We can deceive others, but we ourselves know the truth about what we’re doing.
Brahmacharya means avoiding misconduct, which is a serious cause of both deception and harm – both for ourselves and to other people. Misuse of sexual energy is the main factor in social and psychological suffering. Sexual energy, which is used correctly, is the basis for both healing and spiritual energies.
Astaya means not taking what doesn’t belong to us. This, of course, applies to material things, but also applies to psychological factors – for example, not to deprive someone of a good reputation, talking about him badly. Material things have mental power. If we take things that legally do not belong to us, their negative mental strength will put pressure on us.
Aparigraha (non-prolife) means that we should not think that we really own things. We must look at our property as part of the common good, and at ourselves as a servant for the benefit of all. Non-acquisition causes a lack of greed and thirst for accumulation, only small property is not condemned. It shows the material simplicity inherent in yoga practice.
Five Niyama:
• Shaucha – cleanliness and purity.
– Santosha – satisfaction.
• Tapas – self-discipline.
– Wedding – self-study.
– Ishvar Pranidhana – recognition of divine will.
Purity refers to external accuracy, including following a vegetarian diet.
Vegetarian diet is considered one of the most effective types of meditation assistance, and it should be followed by all serious yoga students. Immaculateness and purity also apply to the purity of heart and mind. We must be free from mental and physical poisons in order to function at full capacity and with maximum power. A pure mind free from anxiety, greed, fear and other emotional difficulties creates clarity and wisdom.
Satisfaction means maintaining balance in everything we do. It doesn’t mean being smug. Staying calm in all life’s ups and downs means true satisfaction, Santosha. Being balanced, able to remain focused and insightful in all actions and experiences of life is the key to our success.
Tapas means discipline based on the constant use of the will to achieve a significant goal, which involves the ability to sacrifice less important things along the way. In any sphere of life, whether it’s running competitions or business, we need the right motivation and discipline, the will to continue the business under any circumstances. Therefore, in order to move the work forward and achieve higher consciousness, we must remain constant in our implementation of tapas.
Self-study means that we must understand who we are and what our real abilities and needs can be. Each of us has a unique nature and potential that we must unleash. What is good for one person may not be good for another.
Recognition of God or cosmic will is not only the subject of religious ideas. This means sublimating the “I” and its needs to a higher consciousness that works throughout our lives and controls this vast universe. With a holistic self, it becomes more likely to experience this “whole”.
If a person has wholeheartedly realized the need to observe the pit, he naturally comes to understand and implement niyama, in the rules of which the need for self-discipline passes through the red thread. And this is the basis, the foundation, by building which you can move on to the next steps.
THIRD STAGE: ASANAS
Asanas are not just exotic, but a deeply thought-out system of exercises that has come down to us from the depths of centuries, and is perfect for people of any gender, age and physical fitness.
Asana is defined as “any comfortable body position that promotes concentration.” According to ancient legends, in ancient times asanas were presented to people by God Shiva to preserve the health of body and soul. Currently, several dozen of the most important ones are used. This is quite enough to maintain health for many years. It should also be noted that if in the old days it was necessary to become a hermit ascetic for fruitful yoga classes, nowadays there is no need for this.
So what is the difference between asanas in general and ordinary gymnastics? During our usual classes, there is a narrowly directed impact on a certain group of muscles. And, as a rule, this impact is limited to tension and relaxation. During the performance of yoga asanas, there is a multifaceted effect on a large number of muscles, ligaments, tendons and joints at the same time. But it’s not only tension and relaxation, but also stretching, compression, and twisting. Moreover, due to the static performance of the exercises, muscles, tendons and even bones are worked out very deeply, up to the bone marrow, which is simply impossible to achieve with other types of exercises. Moreover, all asanas are thought out in such a way that even with their usual implementation, a centralized impact on all systems of the body begins. It is due to this effect that yoga classes make the body flexible and strong, help to cleanse it of toxins, have a pronounced therapeutic and rejuvenating effect. By stretching, twisting and compression, asanas improve the functioning of the heart and circulatory system, as well as allow for a gentle massage of organs and glands of internal secretion, which as a result activate their work. Activation of internal secretion glands leads to normalization of the hormonal background, which is very important for the body as a whole, as well as during periods of puberty in adolescents and menopause in women. In turn, the endocrine system is directly related to the nervous system, which allows you to strengthen it and make it more manageable. After performing exercises that deeply stretch muscles, the “tide” of free energy is subjectively felt. This energy is used in Yoga to expand consciousness.
It is also necessary to say about the main support of our body – the spine. In the process of practicing asanas, the deep muscles surrounding the spine and making up its “muscle corset” are worked out, in addition, the spinal cord passing inside the spine receives more nutrition. This certainly best affects the optimization of all systems of the body in general and nervous in particular.
But perhaps the most interesting effect of regular yoga classes is that the development of the brain and its activities is achieved with the help of asanas. This is due to the fact that the musculoskeletal system and other systems, working in a new way, force the brain to look for new regimens in body control. In turn, the brain provides organs with new, improved, modes of control of their work. Such joint actions help to eventually achieve consciousness control over the physiological processes taking place in the body.
However, real yoga is aimed not only and not so much at working exclusively with the physical body. To begin with, the learning of a particular asana can be divided into several stages. At first, it is very inconvenient to be in it and you want to return to your usual position as soon as possible. Over time, the body gradually begins to obey and the person ceases to feel discomfort. And only after that comes the moment when performing the asana begins to bring some pleasure. So, only when a person has mastered the third stage of performing exercises, real yoga begins, because the student can no longer be distracted by the position of the body, but switches his consciousness to internal work. As a matter of fact, the real deep effect of performing asanas arises only when the practitioner is engaged with internal concentration on certain areas of his body. During the performance of asanas, the practitioner carries out conscious and deep internal work with breathing, energies and even initial work with consciousness, which allows you to further move on to mastering higher levels of yoga. The connection of attention with the rhythm of breathing stops thinking, while the energy of the mind is released and sublimated into intelligence.
The understanding essence of Yoga sees Universal connections in everything that will surround him. He is devoid of complexes and is not burdened with prejudice.
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