So... What's Your Body Got To Do With It?

When we think back to the original yogis in India, we can recall them sleeping outside, with food only gather by donations and absolutely no care for their physical bodies. These yogis had no care for their bodies.

Physical earth was merely a highway and their bodies vehicles on a journey to enlightenment. A true yogi believed that there is no use for our physical bodies, that they are just a way for our mind to interact with world to satisfy God.

It's hard to believe that we went from this form of yoga to ashtanga or even as far as butti yoga. The journey of postural yoga seems to happen overnight. Practices that are considered classical yoga (such as Iyuengar and Ashtanga) center around manipulating the body in certain positions in order to heighten the spiritual effects that yoga can offer.

In today's western yoga, physical fitness and health are the priority of yoga over mental clarity and spiritual awakening. Rather than allowing our bodies to starve and our muscles to fatigue, many compliment yoga with other holistic and "eastern approaches" to care such as a vegetarian diet, essential oils, Himalayan salt lamps, and lotus flower tattoos. Yoga is studied now for the claims that western yoga have for benefiting the body. For instance, every pose in Bikram yoga claims to benefit a different part of the body such as kidney function, circulation, digestion, etc.

It is very hard to find an instructor that does not use main stream media to supplement their practice. And that is the big difference between many ways yoga is practiced now. If you try to find the "proper" way to do yoga, you won't find an answer. Although I may not fully agree with this notion, there is no proper way to do yoga. Yoga is a basic idea that is open to interpretation. (Although no part of yoga should include twerking *cough cough*).

Meditation in Yoga

Meditation alone was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I was tired, and keeping my eyes closed and my back up was hard in such a silent environment.

However

I feel as though my Savasana before and after my practice is my more pure form of meditation that I will be willing to have. When my yoga practice first starts I lay down for around 5 minutes to begin focusing on my breath. Everything around me for that time does not matter. I am able to feel the mat pressing against my heels, to my calves, to my shoulders, to my head. I begin to discipline my breath- breathe in, pause, breathe out half, pause, breathe out the rest- repeat. My breath is the center of my focus for the rest of the practice.

I guess you could say my practice is meditation too. During my practice, I am clearing my head. I am breathing and focusing on getting my breath back the second I lose it. I working towards an active exhale rather than passive. While forcing myself to breathe a specific way, I am losing the stresses of the outside world- which we all know is something that we all need every once in a while.

Even though I have to eventually leave the studio and return to my stresses, my mind is clear and allows me to thunk about the goals have set out and what I need to do to accomplish them without the clouds of confusion or stress that usually follows.