eremedies

Yoga for Life

Yoga is an ancient art to bring discipline to your mind. It is a spiritual exercise, for training yourself to be one with the Universe. With a few important lessons, you can learn to do yoga and find peace.

* Yoga is meditation. Sit cross legged on the floor or a low mattress in a quiet, dimly lit room, keeping your back straight, wrists on your knees. Close your eyes and think of black. Imagine the black you see getting blacker and blacker. It may help you to conjure an image and try to keep that image in focus. Breathe deeply, your every breath filling your lungs from the bottom up, and then emptying them from the top down.

* Yoga is exercise. One of the basic poses of yoga is the lotus posture. You can do this by sitting cross legged but with each foot on top of the thigh instead of under it. If you find this difficult, you can try one foot on top instead of two (half-lotus). Breathing is important, so another posture simply includes breathing deeply and slowly while your hands are folded (as if praying) in front of you and then above your head.

* Yoga is restraint. Yoga doesn't just include movements and meditation. It also means observing cleanliness, honesty, absence of greed and lust, among other things. These are said to make you pure at heart.

* Yoga is self-study. The purpose of yoga is to help you reach spiritual freedom, and to do this, you need to think about who you are, what your needs and beliefs are, what is the nature of existence. It's all about understanding the inner you.