Thor
Jedi Council Member
Allow me to toss in my two cents. I have been practicing yoga quite intensely for about 4 years now. As part of my immersion, I spent a three-month Sadhana course out of contact with the rest of the world and was exposed to many different facets of yoga. Part of this was a one month silent period where no talking was allowed. That was quite interesting and really shows how much energy is tied up in useless opinions about this and that. Subsequently, I have been attending a spiritual school run by an Indian yogi who moved to Denmark of all places to promote the spiritual side of yoga, rather than the purely physical side.
I can by no standards be considered a scholar on yoga but in my experience it is a very deep tradition that encompasses much of the material that is discussed on the forum albeit in a different way. As I see it, it is a holistic system that aims at purifying the body to facilitate spiritual development. To this end there are the asanas that both remove the energetic blockages within the bodies. As I recall, according to yogic lore there are 180 different basic asanas, each of which have one thousand variation leading to 180,000 different positions. Each asana has a physcial, emotional and mental effect and once you are sufficiently sensitive (which I, unfortunately, am not) you will find that particular asanas have particular vibrational resonance with the celestial bodies (this I have from my yogi teacher but it is not something that I have seen written anywhere). In addition to this the asanas have direct effects on the entire endocrine system.
Maybe the most fundamental part of yoga is the concept of Prana, or universal life force. Prana is is the air we breathe and the practice of pranayama or breathing is absolutely fundamental to yoga. It is said that in order to achieve Samadhi, it is necessary to master Pranayama As Laura points out in the introduction to EE, the pipe breath is very similar to Ujjayi pranayama. Next time I see my yogi, I intend to ask him about the three stage breathing program and the warriors breath to get his take on it.
An integral part of the yogic way of life is Ayurveda, where the health of the body is entirely dependent on what you put into it and there is an immense wealth of lore based on different herbs, purified metals and nutrition in general that can be used to treat more or less any condition. Each person has a constitution that is a combination of the three main constitutions, Vata, Pita and Kapha (air, fire and earth, approximately). Depending on your constitution you may be unable to digest dairy products or meat, while other constitutional mixes may result in raw food veganism being detrimental to your health. Each ingredient will affect a person based on the persons constitution. All diseases can be seen as imbalances in the persons constitution and it is claimed that the really good Ayurvedic Masters can tell both your constitution and your diseases by taking your pulse and some even by watching the frequency and timing of the blinking of your eyes. I spent a month in South India a couple of years ago and had a series of Ayurvedic treatments and became fascinated by it. I only scraped the very tip of the iceberg but it is a very interesting subject and I hope that someone one the forum knows more about than I do because I don't do it justice.
Furthermore, meditation with many different techniques, matras, etc. come into play. All this to say that in my experience yoga is very deep and can help with much of the work that we are doing on this forum. For instance, the first session at the yoga school I go, you have a two hour session where you discuss any past medical problems, psychological problems, abuse issues, family hereditary diseases, etc. Based on this information, the yogi makes a program of asanas tailored specifically to your situation. Furthermore, if you're interested, you get advice on dietary changes to make to your life, meditation techniques, etc. I realize that this is rare in the west but I think that there are yogis like that to be found out side of India.
My daily practice varies. For a long time it was a two-hour program but since I started to do the EE program on a daily basis I am doing a very slimmed down program of about 20 minutes. A last point worthy of mention is that being aware while doing yoga makes all the difference between a purely physical stretching program to being a part of a spiritual practice.
Well, I guess that amounted to three cents :)
I can by no standards be considered a scholar on yoga but in my experience it is a very deep tradition that encompasses much of the material that is discussed on the forum albeit in a different way. As I see it, it is a holistic system that aims at purifying the body to facilitate spiritual development. To this end there are the asanas that both remove the energetic blockages within the bodies. As I recall, according to yogic lore there are 180 different basic asanas, each of which have one thousand variation leading to 180,000 different positions. Each asana has a physcial, emotional and mental effect and once you are sufficiently sensitive (which I, unfortunately, am not) you will find that particular asanas have particular vibrational resonance with the celestial bodies (this I have from my yogi teacher but it is not something that I have seen written anywhere). In addition to this the asanas have direct effects on the entire endocrine system.
Maybe the most fundamental part of yoga is the concept of Prana, or universal life force. Prana is is the air we breathe and the practice of pranayama or breathing is absolutely fundamental to yoga. It is said that in order to achieve Samadhi, it is necessary to master Pranayama As Laura points out in the introduction to EE, the pipe breath is very similar to Ujjayi pranayama. Next time I see my yogi, I intend to ask him about the three stage breathing program and the warriors breath to get his take on it.
An integral part of the yogic way of life is Ayurveda, where the health of the body is entirely dependent on what you put into it and there is an immense wealth of lore based on different herbs, purified metals and nutrition in general that can be used to treat more or less any condition. Each person has a constitution that is a combination of the three main constitutions, Vata, Pita and Kapha (air, fire and earth, approximately). Depending on your constitution you may be unable to digest dairy products or meat, while other constitutional mixes may result in raw food veganism being detrimental to your health. Each ingredient will affect a person based on the persons constitution. All diseases can be seen as imbalances in the persons constitution and it is claimed that the really good Ayurvedic Masters can tell both your constitution and your diseases by taking your pulse and some even by watching the frequency and timing of the blinking of your eyes. I spent a month in South India a couple of years ago and had a series of Ayurvedic treatments and became fascinated by it. I only scraped the very tip of the iceberg but it is a very interesting subject and I hope that someone one the forum knows more about than I do because I don't do it justice.
Furthermore, meditation with many different techniques, matras, etc. come into play. All this to say that in my experience yoga is very deep and can help with much of the work that we are doing on this forum. For instance, the first session at the yoga school I go, you have a two hour session where you discuss any past medical problems, psychological problems, abuse issues, family hereditary diseases, etc. Based on this information, the yogi makes a program of asanas tailored specifically to your situation. Furthermore, if you're interested, you get advice on dietary changes to make to your life, meditation techniques, etc. I realize that this is rare in the west but I think that there are yogis like that to be found out side of India.
My daily practice varies. For a long time it was a two-hour program but since I started to do the EE program on a daily basis I am doing a very slimmed down program of about 20 minutes. A last point worthy of mention is that being aware while doing yoga makes all the difference between a purely physical stretching program to being a part of a spiritual practice.
Well, I guess that amounted to three cents :)
