There was a devoted man, a self-taught yogi on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. He had all of these devotional practices that were half based on Hindu rituals and half what he had made up.
In weak moments I reason that I can’t do more or that yoga doesn’t have answers or the little practice that I do each day doesn’t adequately speak to or address what is happening right now with things seeming to be spinning out of control on every fault line across the entire spectrum of existence.
The yogi wants to drop all ideas and know reality from a place of no thought, direct experience without language or concept. The ordinary woman cherishes ideas above all else. Spends the first one third of her life in school, studying ideas, and then she goes to work generating and selling ideas.
If yoga is to take its proper place as an main, effective agent for positive change in the world it is because of the philosophy that it is based on—not as much because of the power of doing the physical postures.
...its important to remember that your struggles with the difficult physical actions are merely a warm up for the stances that yoga ethics demand.
There are no easy or fast solutions to many of the problems we each face personally as well as collectively. There is often great complexity in the even the basic matters that we must deal with. The complexity that is inherent to acting skillfully and responding fittingly to whatever circumstances we face requires us to be patient, caring, and compassionate with ourselves and with each other.
Abhyasa is a Sanskrit word that is defined as the effort to remain steady in a state of yoga (citta vrtti nirodha) and thus be able to see beyond the visible, material world to the sacred...
Even though most of us begin yoga without giving much or any thought to the yamas eventually we open the door to contemplating and even putting them into action.
Every exercise in practice provides you with a microcosmic opportunity to advance along your solitary path to the macrocosmic pinnacle of yoga.
There is a sacred text called the Vijnana Bhairava, a gift from the God Shiva, and in it Shiva gives a set of yantras or images that are to be repeatedly held in the mind as devices for meditation.
