Warming up for Yoga

One reads a lot about yoga these days. On one hand there is the ruckus about yoga being a religious pursuit. On the other there are ads that promise weight loss and hot butts through yoga. In between there are scholarly studies that indicate that practice of yoga can cause more harm than good. There are blogs that put out a yoga posture a day in something resembling the English language. There is a whole range of hybrid yoga that is promoted on television channels and print ads by spandex-clad and photoshopped yoga instructors. Yoga, through these attempts to label it as a physical fitness regime or a weight loss solution, seems to be on the verge of being turned into something altogether different from what it truly is.

For those not familiar with the Sanskrit root of the word "yoga," it means union, communion, binding, using, applying, and directing one�s attention to. Yoga is the entire philosophy of dedicating one�s being to seek union with one�s highest life state. Different people use terms like god, the divine, the creator, and the universe instead of �highest life state,� but at the end of the day they all mean the same thing.

First things first. What is commonly promoted as yoga and comes to mind first when one mentions yoga is yoga asanas or yogic postures. However, yoga is not just about postures, body contortions and breathing exercises. That is only one aspect of yoga, known as asanas and pranayama that make up what is commonly known as hatha yoga (the way to union through determined effort), or as Patanjali called it, ashtanga yoga (the eight limbed path to union). Hence an understanding of yoga based on the physical postures or yoga asanas is an extremely limited understanding of yoga.

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