The word “yoga” is a Sanskrit term which can be translated as “union” or “to yoke” or harness. It refers to the process of unification and change self realization. Initially, yoga was a thing of the East, mostly from India where it was a part of their religious rituals and activities.

Today, yoga is practiced all over the world to attain peace of mind and a healthy body. One of the key reasons of yoga popularity is the ease of practicing without equipment requirements. It is a practice mastered through the yogis own mental and physical strength.

Most popular styles of yoga include:

*Bikram Yoga (hot yoga)

*Iyengar Yoga (focused on alignment in poses)

*Asthanga Yoga (power yoga, flow yoga)

Modern, fast paced lifestyles do not allow people to take time out of their work schedules and relax their bodies and minds. This race to get ahead leaves people physically restless and mentally exhausted. Constant stress leads to many medical and psychological problems in society.

While it’s true that technology has given us many time-saving solutions for daily activities and chores, at the same time, these gizmos have also impacted the quality of our lives in a negative way.

We miss nature, personal connection, friendship and community.

Yoga is the answer to their problems which gives serenity of mind along with a healthy body. It can take as little as 15 minutes, or as much as 1-2 hours. Yoga offers something for everyone and can fit with almost any lifestyle.

SO WHY IS YOGA SO POPULAR IN AMERICA?

If you look closely, it’s clear that American society as a whole is facing various crises. These crisis includes financial, marital, health, and environmental. To complicate things more, these problems go beyond any particular class or group; it exists on all levels of society, so Americans turn to various alternatives to rid themselves of these trying times.

The following scenarios in particular lead people to seek yoga for gaining peace and tranquility of mind and body:

* People are dissatisfied with their work life

* People are dissatisfied with their failing health

* Local churches and temples are seeing less and less members

* Downturn in economy has forced many people to look inside

The most popular type of yoga among Americans is called, Hatha Yoga, which is really a catch-all term for the physical practice of yoga: posture and breath. There is an estimated 200 Hatha yoga postures that are taught in varied sequences depending on the teacher—and more importantly, the student.

Yoga classes today usually focus first on physical health and mental wellbeing, and include a combination of various poses, breathing techniques and meditation. Yoga improves blood circulation and increases flexibility in turn achieving a healthy brain and a well toned and trimmed body for the American yogi.

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Yoga, the brainchild of the ancient Hindus is a form of mysticism, whose origin is impossible to trace, dating back as it does to thousands of years before recorded history. One of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, Maharishi (or Sage) Patanjali, its founding father lived a full three centuries before Christ. A great philosopher and grammarian, he was also a physician, with a considerable body of medical work attributed to him, though this work has been lost in the pages of time. Though founded by Patanjali, yet Yoga existed as a distinct teaching and system of life long before him.

A traditional Indian system of healing the mind and body, through a series of mental, spiritual and physical exercises, Yoga is designed to yoke or unite or fuse individual consciousness and awareness (atma or the human soul) with super conscious awareness (Paramatma or the Supreme Being), which is, but a natural state of mind for both. Ultimately, this yoking process leads to a realisation of identity, and by integrating mind, body and spirit; it enhances physical and mental health and well-being, even as it helps attain spiritual insight and harmony, a union with the divine.

A blend of spiritual and physical exercises that encourage mental, spiritual and physical fitness, these exercises are also known to be effective against anxiety, arthritis, headache, migraine, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, pregnancy, rheumatoid arthritis, and more. Yoga’s special exercises, breathing and meditation techniques are renowned for cleansing the body of toxins, improving the muscle tone, as well as, blood circulation.

A way of life, the aim of Patanjali Yoga is to set man free from the cage of matter. Mind being the highest form of matter, the mind, body, soul union that is the goal of everyone practicing Yoga, frees them from the dragnet of Chital or Ahankara (mind or ego), making for a pure being. Practising Yoga does that and more!

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When you practice yoga, it is, of course, not necessary to have a full understanding of yoga history in order to fully benefit from your practice. A brief understanding of the history behind yoga, however, may increase your spiritual practice and inspire you to find out more about the tradition behind the discipline.

The first writings about yoga were written in Sanskrit in early religious manuscripts in India called the Vedas. The word ‘yoga’ has many meanings. The root of the word is ‘yug’ which means ‘to hitch up’, referring to fastening horse bridles to a carriage. But yoga also means ‘to actively put to use’ or ‘yoke’ or ‘join’. Today, it is agreed upon that yoga is a method of joining or a discipline. Men who practice yoga are called yogi or yogin and women who practice yoga are called yogini.

Yoga was first passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. It wasn’t until about 2000 years ago when an Indian named Patanjali wrote ‘The Yoga Sutra’ that the philosophy of yoga was committed to paper. Yoga is not just about stretching and breathing and holding poses. Yoga is a philosophy on how to live life and deal with the challenges that human beings face daily. The Yoga Sutra defined this philosophy in 195 statements.

Sutra can be defined as ‘thread’ or ‘aphorism’, which means ‘a short declaration of truth’. It also means ‘the concentration of a large quantity of information into a simple definition’. It is a way of looking at truths that apply to everyone despite culture in the clearest way possible.

Hatha yoga, or the yoga that you do when you take a yoga class or perform yogic poses, was begun as a physical form of meditation. The physical act of yoga calms your body and allows your mind to become calm. It also gives you the physical strength to sustain long periods of meditation.

When you perform the physical practice of yoga, you are only engaging in half of the discipline as it has been practiced for thousands of years. Yoga is an incredible form of exercise and calming for the body, but it can also be used as a spiritual practice and a way to calm the mind and will as well.

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Stephen Kreutzer is a freelance publisher based in Cupertino, California. He publishes articles and reports in various ezines and provides yoga tips on www.more-about-yoga.com.

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Yoga can seem like a complicated concept – or, at the least, a dizzying array of physical manipulations that turn seemingly happy-looking human beings into happy looking human pretzels.

Even more disconcerting, a stereotype does exist in places where the term yoga is synonymous with cult, or some kind of archaic spiritual belief that compels one to quit their job, sell their house, and go live in the middle of nowhere.

In actual fact, Yoga is a very basic “thing”. If you’ve had the opportunity to visit a country where it has been established for generations – India, Japan, China, and others – it’s really rather, well, “ordinary”.

The practice of yoga came to the west back in 1893 when one of India’s celebrated gurus, Swami Vivekananda, was welcomed at the World Fair in Chicago. He is now known for having sparked the West’s interest in yoga.

Literally, the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit term Yug, which means: “to yoke, bind, join, or direct one’s attention”. At the same time, yoga can also imply concepts such as fusion, union, and discipline.

The sacred scriptures of Hinduism (an ancient belief system from India that has a global presence) also defines yoga as “unitive discipline”; the kind of discipline that, according to experts Georg Feuerstein and Stephan Bodian in their book Living Yoga, leads to inner and outer union, harmony and joy.

In essence, yoga is most commonly understood as conscious living; of tapping into one’s inner potential for happiness (what Sankrit refers to as ananda).

What Yoga Isn’t:

Sometimes it’s helpful to understand things by what they aren’t; especially when dealing with a topic, like Yoga, that is quite easily misunderstood.

Authors and yoga scholars Feuerstein and Bodian help us understand yoga by telling us what it is NOT:

Yoga is NOT calisthenics (marked by the headstand, the lotus posture or some pretzel-like pose). While it is true that yoga involves many postures – especially in hatha yoga – these are only intended to make people get in touch with their inner feelings.

Yoga is NOT a system of meditation – or a religion – the way many people are misled to believe. Meditation is only part of the whole process of bringing ourselves into the realm of the spiritual.

What is the essence of Yoga?

Virtually all yogic science and philosophy states that a human being is but a fragment of an enormous universe, and when this human being learns to “communion” with this vastness, then he/she attains union with something that is bigger than him/her.

This attachment or tapping into something bigger thus enables one to walk the true path of happiness. By flowing along with the force, the individual is able to discover truth.

And with truth comes realization; but to attain realization, our words, thoughts and deeds must be based on truth. People attend courses on yoga and go to studios to learn new techniques in yoga, but yoga teacher Tim Miller said that “True yoga begins when leave the studio; it’s all about being awake and being mindful of your actions”.

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It doesn’t matter if you’ve never exercised a day in your life, or if you are the most fit person in the world. Free information online – on every “style” of Yoga – is pretty hard to come across. Tired of looking and searching all over the place, the author decided to create a free Yoga Information Portal at: www.free-yoga-online.info

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