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When a new student joins my yoga classes, I have them introduce themselves to the class. As a part of the introduction, they are asked to tell why they decided to join a yoga class. One of the common reasons mentioned is weight loss. Of course, many students have doubts as to how yoga, which is generally a gentler form of exercise, can help you lose weight. Most people tend to identify weight loss with vigorous physical activities in a gym or a fitness center – treadmill, pumping iron etc. How to lose weight?Whether you are a seasoned practitioner or an infrequent practitioner of meditation, you know how difficult it is to keep the mind steady on the object of your meditation. That is simply because that is the very nature of the mind. The mind only knows how to run around with different thoughts, emotions, feelings, perceptions etc. Swami Vivekananda likened the mind to a monkey – not an ordinary monkey but one who has had an alcoholic drink or two. Not only that, but the monkey has also been bitten by a scorpion. That is how the mind behaves all the time. During meditation, we try to focus our mind on a single object and try to keep that focus without intrusion by other thoughts. One simple technique that I have found very helpful in my own meditation practice is to cycle the awareness through a sequence of body awareness, breath awareness, awareness on the third eye (spot between the two eyebrows) and then focus on the object of meditation. During the recent yoga intensive, I took the students through a guided meditation using this technique. I invite you to listen to this audio and use it as a guided meditation sequence for your own meditation practice. I would love to get your feedback. As we have seen before, yoga has been defined in yoga sutras by Patanjali as "yogash-chitta-vritti-nirodhah" or "yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind-field". Put another way, yoga is the ability to keep the mind calm and peaceful under all circumstances. In order to understand how to keep the mind calm, it is essential first to understand what distracts the mind all the time. The term used by Patanjali for these distractions or perturbations of the mind is "vritti". After providing a basic definition of yoga, Patanjali goes on to describe the five "vrittis" which cause disturbance in the mind. These five are:
During the recent yoga intensive, I discussed the concept of these five vrittis and how they function in the mind. Please listen to I am pleased to announce the next 21-day Yoga Challenge program. The past programs have been very well received by all the participants. For most of them, it has been truly a life-transforming experience. I invite you to join me on this exciting and deeply rewarding 21-day yoga journey. Here are the particulars:
The concepts of Kundalini and Chakras are derived from the ancient wisdom of the Tantras. We normally associated all yoga-related knowledge with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. In the yoga sutras, Patanjali did not mention about the kundalini or the chakras because his main focus was to control the fluctuations of the mind through meditative practices. Subsequently, the practice of Hatha Yoga was developed and presented in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (HYP) by Swatmarama. The HYP combined the ancient practices of tantra along with the concepts from Yoga Sutras which is what is currently practiced as Hatha Yoga by most practitioners of yoga.
For most people, the practice of yoga simply means the practice of asanas or physical postures and stretching. A typical "yoga" class at a gym or a health club usually lasts one hour and consists of a fairly vigorous practice of various asanas. The practitioners feel great because they develop more flexibility and strength at the physical level. But is the practice of asanas all there is in yoga? Can yoga help us reduce stress? Can it make us more aware of our own actions and take more ownership of our actions and their outcomes? Can it help us with negative emotions like anger, fear, jealousy, hatred etc? The answer to all the se and many more questions that may come to your mind is a thumping "YES". However, to get all those benefits, we need to turn to Patanjali who in the Yoga Sutras has enumerated eight limbs of yoga. By practicing these eight limbs of yoga we can indeed get all the benefits and strive to achieve our highest potential in life, in all spheres of our activity. Listen to this audio recording from one of the sessions of the recent 21-day yoga challenge program.
What is Yoga? Patanjali, in the yoga sutras, defines yoga as "yogash-chitta vritti nirodhah" which can be translated as "yoga is the ability to control the constant fluctuations that are going on in the mind". To learn how to control the mind, we need to first understand how the mind functions. What are the different functions of the mind, how do they interact and how decisions are made? What causes us to make the wrong choices? What causes these constant fluctuations? To understand these and other related concepts, listen to this audio recording from one of the recent classes in the 21-day yoga program.
I am pleased to announce the next pranayama/meditation intensive. Come and join me for this life-transforming experience where you will learn two of the most important aspects of a complete, integrated yoga practice – pranayama (breathing techniques) and meditation. In this program I will introduce you to many of the breathing techniques that are mentioned in our ancient yogic texts. I will also introduce the concepts and techniques of meditation. No prior pranayama or meditation experience is required.
When you attend a yoga class, it is most likely that the class starts with OM chanting. If you attend a Hindu ritual ceremony, it always starts by reciting OM. In fact, all the hymns (shlokas) of the Vedas and the Upanishads start with OM. A natural question that comes to mind is – what is the significance of OM and why it is recited at the beginning (and the end) of all yogic practices. In one of the classes during the currently ongoing 21-day yoga programs, I presented my thoughts on the topic. Please listen to this audio clip [audio:http://yogawithsubhash.com/audio/om-significance.mp3] from that class and see why I believe OM to be such a significant symbol and sound. I wrote about OM and its meaning in a previous blog post as well.
In the 21-day yoga challenge class yesterday, I discussed the meaning of meditation as given to us by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras. In sutra 3.2, he defines meditation as "tatra pratyayaikataanataa dhyaanam" – "Dhyana (meditation) is the continuous flow of cognition toward that object". In this audio clip,
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