Before you decide whether to start a Yoga practice or not I would suggest having a quick glance at the idea of Yoga and understanding how it can help you achieve a healthy body, a calm mind and overall happiness in life.
During everyday life we are so absorbed with things that are swirling around us: work, study, family, friends, money, romantic relationships, etc. that we rarely have the time to look inside ourselves, to understand what is really going on in our bodies and in our minds. Outside circumstances completely consume our consciousness and energy. Most of our actions and decisions throughout life are being made without the beauty of self-consciousness, without understanding why we do things this or that way. We rarely even realise that we follow unconscious patterns adopted from our parents or other significant figures, while they themselves learned those from their ancestors. Sometimes we do things because we want to be like everybody else... We almost never take the time to stop and think: "Am I really coming from my heart now?”.
Usually, we disregard the inner voice which comes from the heart, we can call it "the intuition". So very often our outside world is not in harmony with our real selves, our mind is not in harmony with our heart. This is the right way of getting anxiety, depression and all kinds of stress.
Thus, it is important to find the connection between our mind and our heart, between our body and our spirit, between the everyday life and our inner self.
YOGA means UNION
First of all, it is about the union of the body, the mind and the spirit, which is indispensable to reach harmony and joy in life. Yoga also refers to the union of absolutely everything: every single thing on this earth and in the universe itself exists only in condition and as a consequence of this unity. No light can exist without the darkness, no planet can exist without a galaxy, no shape can exist without the space around it, no creature can exist without the whole ecosystem, no man can exist without a woman, no person can exist without body, mind and spirit... All is unity, all is interconnected and interdependent, all is the cause and the consequence. All is one...
This idea of unity is the essence of being.
Today when we talk about Yoga we understand only HatHa Yoga, which covers the physical postures, meditation and special breathing techniques. This is of course the case, but it is just one part of a wider practice that dates back 7000 years. Yoga is a broad system with detailed teachings for all aspects of human development, from music and dance to psychology and sociology. At all these levels Yoga offers special approaches and techniques that help us achieve the idea of universal unity or cosmic consciousness.
In fact, there are many ways to reach it. Some of those ways are described in different directions of Yoga, while others are alternative paths. Unity can be attained through years of meditation, through unconditional love, through unconventional work, through thought process and knowledge, through art, even through pain and suffering. However, the awareness can also come from nowhere, just like a sudden lightning! So there is no difference in how we come to Universal consciousness, the important thing here is the process itself, our experience and transformation, our existence in every moment, and only then our possible enlightenment :).
So Yoga practice is just a tool, which helps us come to Universal awareness. It also has a great healing potential for body and mind. Yoga addresses not only structural imbalances in the body, like bone and joint problems but also organic dysfunctions, including hormonal and immune system disorders. Particularly yoga treats nervous system disorders, emotional tension and psychological difficulties of all types from stress to psychosis.
Let's get started on the first steps of Yoga practice - you will be surprised how great this experience can become!