Saturday, March 5, 2011

Yoga in India

The whole world is talking about yoga principles these days. In the west people are increasingly casting a keen eye on relaxation and yoga meditation, essentials of the ancient Indian principles of yoga. No wonder Indians have kept the tradition alive and well; as a therapy they know that there’s nothing better than good old yoga.

The word yoga means ‘union’, though a more literal equivalent is the English ‘yoke’. In fact, the words yoga and yoke have the same Sanskrit root. The knowledge of yoga meditation comes to us originally from the Vedas.

The idea then developed and branched into a whole lot of other texts and philosophies. The yoga that is most well known today is the Hatha Yoga of bodily positions called asanas. Through a perfection of the practice, one is supposed to reach a higher state of being, a state that is in union with brahmana or the Absolute (also the Hindu concept of godhead). In the ancient times our rishis (Hindu ascetics) practiced yoga to achieve self-realization, a necessary step towards spiritual progress. For them yoga was the way to liberation (moksha) from the material world. Advanced yogis (experts on yoga) even claimed to acquire extraordinary powers, such as how to vanish into thin air!

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