Yoga
What is Yoga?
The word yoga was derived from the Sanskrit word yuj which means
‘to join’ or ‘to unite’. This union is not merely, about your nose touching your knees as you bend to touch your toes! The union referred to is that of your mind with your body. You integrate with your surroundings and nature.
And, finally, your individual consciousness with the universal consciousness.
Yoga poses are great to strengthen and relax the body, however there’s a lot more to Yoga than that.
Yoga is all about harmonizing the body with the mind and breath through the means of various breathing exercises, yoga poses and meditation.
If you are looking at losing weight, developing a strong and flexible body, having beautiful glowing skin, or being at peace, Yoga can help you achieve it all. Yoga is often partially understood as being limited to poses and its benefits are only perceived to be at the physical level. However, we fail to realize the immense benefits yoga offers in uniting the body, mind, and breath. When you are in harmony, the journey through life is calmer, happier and more fulfilling.
What does Yoga have to offer?
- All-round fitness
- Weight loss
- Stress relief
- Inner peace
- Improved immunity
- Living with greater awareness
- Better relationships
- Increased energy
- Better flexibility & posture
- Better intuition
With all this and much more to offer, the benefits of yoga are felt in a profound yet subtle manner.
Yoga for all-round fitness
Health is not a mere absence of disease. It is a dynamic expression of life – in terms of how joyful, loving and enthusiastic you are. Yoga poses, pranayama (breathing techniques) and meditation are a holistic fitness package. The benefits accrued by being a regular practitioner are numerous. Some very discernible ones are:
- Improves health
- Gives mental strength
- Improves physical strength
- Protects from injury
- Detoxifies the body
Yoga for weight loss
Sun Salutation and Kapal Bhati pranayama are highly useful for losing weight. Moreover, with regular practice of yoga, we tend to become more sensitive to our body and its needs. This, in turn, helps keep a check on our food intake and body weight.
Yoga for stress relief
A few minutes of yoga during the day can be a great way to get rid of stress that accumulates daily – in both the body and mind. Yoga postures, pranayama and meditation are effective techniques to release stress.
Yoga for inner peace
We all love to visit peaceful, serene spots that are rich in natural beauty. Little do we realize that peace can be found right within us and we can take a mini-vacation to experience this any time of the day! Benefit from a small holiday every day with yoga and meditation. Yoga is also one of the best ways to calm a disturbed mind.
Yoga to improve immunity
Our system is a seamless blend of the body, mind and spirit. An irregularity in the body affects the mind and similarly unpleasantness or restlessness in the mind can manifest as an ailment in the body. Yoga poses help massage organs and strengthens muscles; while breathing techniques and meditation release stress and improve immunity.
Yoga to live with greater awareness
The mind is constantly involved in activity – swinging from the past to the future but never staying in the present. By simply being aware of this tendency of the mind, we can save ourselves from getting stressed or worked up. Yoga and pranayama help create that awareness and bring the mind back to the present moment, where it can stay happy and focused.
Yoga for better relationships
Yoga can even help improve your relationship with your loved ones. A mind that is relaxed, happy and contented is better able to deal with sensitive relationship matters. Use Yoga and meditation to keep the mind happy and peaceful and watch how your relations with those around you blossom.
Yoga to increase energy
Do you feel completely drained by the end of the day? Shuttling through chores and multitasking continuously can be quite exhausting. A few minutes of yoga everyday boosts our energy level and keeps us fresh. A 10-minute online-guided meditation in the middle of a hectic day is all you need to charge up your batteries.
Yoga for better flexibility & posture
Yoga must become part of your daily routine to get a body that is strong, supple and flexible. Regular yoga practice stretches and tones the body muscles and also makes them strong. It also helps improve your body posture when you stand, sit, sleep or walk. This would, in turn, help relieve you of body ache due to incorrect posture.
Yoga to improve intuition
Yoga and meditation have the power to improve your intuitive ability so that you spontaneously realise what needs to be done, when and how, to yield positive results.
Remember, yoga is a continuous process. So, keep practising! The deeper you go into your yoga practice, the more profound will be its benefits.
Practising Yoga helps develop the body and mind, yet is not a substitute for medicine. It is essential to learn and practice yoga under the supervision of a trained Yoga teacher. In case of any medical condition, practice yoga only after consulting your doctor and teacher.
Meditation
What is Meditation?
Meditation is that which gives you deep rest.
The rest in meditation is said to be deeper than deep.
The benefits of meditation are manifold.
A calm mind, good concentration, clarity of perception, improvement in communication, inner strength and relaxation are all natural results of meditating regularly. In today’s worlds where stress catches on faster than the eye can see or the mind can perceive, meditation is no more a luxury. It is a necessity. Meditation holds the power to unconditional happiness and peace of mind.
What does Meditation have to offer?
- Effects on the Mind, Body & Spirit
- Stillness, Peace & Quieting the Mind
- Evolving our Brains
- Reducing Fear and Anxiety
- Reducing Stress
- The Restful Awareness Response
- Increased Creativity and Intuition
- Spiritual Benefits of Meditation
- Experiencing the Infinite
- Expanding Consciousness
The physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits of meditation have been well documented for thousands of years. Scientists, philosophers, spiritualists, and religious leaders have heralded the power of witnessing awareness. They may refer to it as deep reflection, being present, mindfulness, contemplation, prayer, meditation, or simply relaxing, but it’s all the same thing—disconnecting from the activity and drifting to the space between our thoughts.
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Effects on the Mind, Body & Spirit
Over the first few days, weeks, and months of daily meditation, the quieting impact this simple practice has on your body mind begins to express itself in each choice you make. Your shift may be so subtle that even you don’t see these meditation benefits at first. But your thoughts, selections, decisions, and daily actions become more conscious, leading to more intuitively conscious behaviour. Then one day you realise you have a broader perspective, a deeper sense of calm, and heightened clarity, greater creativity, expanded grace, greater eases.
You realise you are making more spontaneous right choices.
You realise you are being more authentic. There is greater alignment between what you think, what you say, and what you do. These are the myriad effects and benefits of meditation. The world is still turning and sometimes faster than ever but to you, that swirl is in slower motion, like texts coming into your cell phone with a really faint hum rather than a blasting ringtone.
Stillness, Peace & Quieting the Mind
Over time, moving from activity to stillness during meditation translates into more conscious behaviour during non-meditation.
Your interactions with the world shift more effortlessly from reactivity to responding, from reflexiveness to reflectiveness, from defensiveness to openness, and from drama to calm.
There’s a big bonus regarding the effects of meditation on top of all these other nourishing aspects of having a practice. Over time, meditation benefits you by quieting you to a state where you experience life with a deeper understanding of your true Self, which can open the door to spiritual exploration, connection, discovery, and fulfillment, one of the many spiritual benefits of meditation.
It is along the so-called “spiritual path” that you truly can experience your unbounded and unconditioned Self the infinite you that rests at the core of who you are underneath your body and beneath this worldly garb of titles, roles, masks, ego, and the complexities of this life.
Evolving our Brains
Different types of meditation styles take you to different places.
Some calm you in the moment, others calm you after the moment, some open you, some inspire you, some relax you, some comfort you, others transport you, and some deliver you to a life of oneness and deeper fulfillment. This may sound like a huge leap from the clinical, scientific proof of the power and benefits of meditation.
Reducing Fear and Anxiety
As human beings evolved more than 20,000 years ago, we were hardwired with a self-preservation reflex—a powerful survival mechanism woven into our DNA—known as the fight-or-flight response. It was first described by American physiologist Walter Cannon in 1929 and explains what happens to our body’s most primal brain functions when we sense a threat to our physical body—essentially how we react when something crosses our perceived boundary of safety. When we perceive a life-threatening situation, we react in the moment and choose one of two basic paths of survival: to fight or to run. One of the benefits of meditation is that it gives us a choice in situations like these instead of reacting automatically.
Reducing Stress
The physiological and emotional responses to stress are well documented. And it’s pretty obvious that if we respond with an ego or fight or flight response to every fear and need that’s not met, we will certainly die sooner or live a more painful life. Fortunately, one of the benefits of meditation is a tool that helps reverse the impact that fight and ego responses have on our minds and bodies. Meditation can unravel the cellular damage that stress has caused and alter our DNA hardwiring of the fight response.
The Restful Awareness Response
When we meditate, our body’s chemistry changes. In fact, we experience the opposite of the physiological effects produced by the fight-or-flight and ego responses as a benefit of meditation practice. We are less inclined to perspire, our breathing and heart rate slow, our body’s production of stress hormones decreases, our growth hormone levels are elevated, our immune system strengthens, and our platelets become less sticky as blood flows more easily throughout our entire body. As these physiological shifts to our physical body occur, our mind calms, anxiety lessens, stress seems to shed, and there is an emotional shift in how we respond to unmet needs. This state of restful awareness in which the health benefits of meditation are activated can last for a moment or through the entire meditation. But the beauty of this process is that restful awareness continues to benefit our bodies even after our meditation session.
Increased Creativity and Intuition
As the effects of meditation continue, we become more alert, more creative, more intuitive, and more relaxed. We start having anxiety-free days, and stress becomes more manageable. And, as a benefit of regular meditation, our first response to unmet needs is no longer the ego response. Our more common response to an unmet need starts to be one of restful awareness—of silent witnessing before we act out old, conditioned response patterns yet again.
Spiritual Benefits of Meditation
Beyond meditation’s health benefits, the spiritual aspect of meditation has long been misunderstood. And, this is one of the main reasons why mainstream culture has not been more open to embrace the practice and many benefits of meditation. Even the definition of spirituality differs from person to person. Each of us is seeking a reconnection to the whole, to our Source, to God, to our most divine version. We each choose the most resonating path to understand and express the bigger, more profound, universal concepts of life, death, pain, love, truth, bliss, and purpose. Some people don’t care about these things, because their awareness has not drifted into these concepts at this point in their lives. Ultimately, each of us will walk through these experiences and face these questions. So even if someone is not currently engaged in this conversation, simply having an awareness of these natural life principles invokes an understanding that there is something bigger, more expansive, more knowing, and more intelligent than we are. We could call that entity a universal being. Never born and never died. Existing in every moment and connected to all things simultaneously.
Experiencing the Infinite
Most of us grew up in homes where we were introduced to an all-knowing, all-seeing, infinite being known as God. How else can finite flesh beings such as us, with limited tools and a limited understanding, ingest such a beyond-this-realm concept as oneness? There needs to be an almighty essence that embodies all the characteristics of one nest so we can better understand them—a sort of guide between us and one nest. And this is where the benefits of meditation come in.
Most of us have a similar understanding regarding our own personal God’s nature. Essentially, this being created everything; is infinite, immortal, omnipresent, spans the existence of time and, therefore, is timeless; controls or influences everything; is everywhere at once or has demigods or avatars who can be anywhere; is capable of resurrection and rebirth; can be worshipped and appealed to; and has the ability to craft what we would consider miracles.
Expanding Consciousness
When our mind analyses this being or power, we see this omniscient, omnipotent, infinite God or spirit at once in everything and yet separate from us and the world. Vedanta would say this separation exists only on the surface, only in our mind. Deeper below the surface, our mind, body, and spirit are all the same things—pure, unbounded consciousness—one-nest wearing different disguises. One of the benefits of meditation is to experience this perceived sense of separation less and less. According to Vedanta, liberation lies in knowing the reality of this one-nest and experiencing spirit through varying aspects of study, devotion, selfless service, and practice.