The Whole Goal Of Yoga

Dear Yogis.

To start with, here’s a yoga belt for £1! Secondly, I’m giving  David Williams one more week in the  Friday Yoga Email because he said some really basic things about yoga which may have been lost as the practice became more gymnastic and off-putting for many. In his talk about his memoir,  My Search For Yoga, he took us right back to basics: what are we doing with the body and why? He gave us the goals of yoga. Here they are:

First of all, David would ask newcomers to his classes if they have any pain or physical problems. The First Goal of yoga is therapeutic; to get you well, out of pain and feeling good. Then, Goal Number Two is to cultivate that good feeling and watch it grow. “Yoga is about getting naturally high and seeing how good you can feel”. David says: “That is the whole game, increasing  prana – life-force energy”.

Goal Number Three, having increased your prana, is to live in basic wellness all the time. Enhanced prana leads to increased energy which gives you immunities. Yoga teaches you not to get so exhausted. When you are tired, your immunities are weakest. Yoga takes you to a point where you are in charge of your energy and living in wellness all the time.

Flexibility is not a goal of yoga. The goal of the postures is symmetry. You want to get your weak side stronger and your tight side looser. Eventually, the musculature of your left and right side balances and holds your vertebrae in alignment. Most people have a dominant side, imbalance, misaligned vertebrae, tight and stressed muscles, pinched nerves, and pain and fatigue. Yoga is trying to go the other way; towards symmetry. Then, the focus in yoga is to keep fine tuning it. That’s the practice of yoga for the decades.

Zoom Classes 

Well!!! Come and fix the whole of your musculature and the whole of your life this afternoon! Have a go today at 4.30.

Yoga in the news 

The Daily Express has: How to reduce visceral fat: Yoga exercises shown to reduce the harmful belly fat in study. The patients (women) in the yoga group participated in an average of 30 hours’ worth of supervised yoga practice. The yoga participant’s abdominal circumference was significantly reduced in comparison to the participants on the waiting list.

India Today has: Inspirational yoga quotes to motivate you for a better living. Ingenious article!!! “Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one's actions-B.K.S. Iyengar” or “Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim. The better your practice, the brighter the flame-B.K.S. Iyengar” or “In truth, Yoga doesn’t take time, it gives time– Ganga White” and many others.