Yoga in America is primarily viewed as a physical workout. Our bodies are designed to adapt by growing leaner, more flexible and stronger to challenges that require that form. Assuming you have participated in or seen a yoga practice, based on this alone, you can understand how it can create physical strength, increased mobility, flexibility, stamina as well as increased lung capacity. The yoga asanas (pronounced aah-SAH-Nahs, the physical poses) are designed to challenge a person throughout his or her life at every physical level and every stage. When a person is young, the poses might be found easily with flexibility and strength but the life experience is not yet behind each pose to give it the mental strength it might require to experience it at a deep level. That life experience allows the person to move into the poses at their limit but the experience seems richer and sweeter for being perfect wherever the body lands.
The spiritual side of yoga is not really spiritual in the organized religion sense. It helps you find that God is within yourself because you are alive and breathing in all of your glory. It challenges you to challenge your beliefs and to ask why you believe something. The purpose is not to dimish your beliefs but to bring you to a place in your life where you can say what you believe with conviction and don’t passively go through life, which can create unease and restlessness. A good instructor will not be obvious with this message but will allow you to find it within yourself. In yoga we do not wait to be saved. We find heaven on earth, right here, right now in this and every breath. The act of breathing and simply being alive is an act of God within us! We do not need someone to tell us what God thinks because through our own experience of life, we have learned morals and ethics and respect for every other being on this planet because they also contain God. So we have these connections, we make up the fabric of existance, the fabric strengthens as we do.
It was a few Saturday’s ago that I was invited to participate at a yoga class at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. In the back property was an amazing instructor and several students on a large circular wooden sculpture. This is where with arms raised to the sky and bowing in humbleness in the sun salutions, the air filled my lungs and it was as if every breath contained God. With fresh air that filled the blue sky and the sun shining through, there was pure glory in the breath.
Kelliasana's Blog 