WHAT IS YOGA?

I often hear people say, "I do yoga!" But, the fact of the matter is you can't really do yoga. The word Yoga literally translates as union, and refers to the union of body, mind, and spirit. One who has reached a state of yoga has become enlightened. So, it would be like saying "I do enlightenment." It's always good for a little chuckle, but what people really mean, is that they practice yoga, or enlightenment.

Initially, for most people, the practice begins on the physical level. There are some 840,000 asanas (physical postures) described by Siva in the Gheranda-Samhita. This would keep even the most ambitious practitioner challenged for more than a few lifetimes. However, it doesn't take long to realize the path towards yoga extends far beyond mastery of the asanas. As our practice deepens we notice that when asanas are correctly sequenced and directly linked with the breath this combination produces feelings of equanimity, peace, and centeredness. The practice begins to yield some of the magic by revealing certain patterns that lead to certain results. Specifically, linking of the breath with the asanas leads to greater alignment of body and mind.

The body and mind are really one, but because of our enculturation we treat them as separate and often dwell more in one or the other. This creates an imbalance of self, because we are not just the mind, or just the body. By using the breath to focus the mind as we move the body in and out of the asanas, we begin to integrate and balance the mind-body continuum. The deeper you look and the more you engage yourself in the practice, the more a whole new world unfolds before you from within you.

I consider yoga to be the science of consciousness. What makes yoga a science, is that it seeks to gain knowledge from our interaction with the world; potentially building greater conscious awareness in every moment. In the science of consciousness, we are all walking laboratories in which the learning never ends. This is what makes yoga different from most religions which claim to have it all figured out. The universe and everything in it continues to evolve. Evolution is a process of constant change--nothing in the physical universe is static. As a result, we must continually be open to the never ending process of learning. That is an essential aspect of yoga.

If you surrender yourself completely to the study and practice of yoga, you may one day in this lifetime or another come to an ultimate realization. What that realization is has been described in many different ways by many different beings over the millennia. I will not belittle it or you by trying to describe something infinite with the finite tool of language, but instead I will encourage you to find out for yourself. And when you embark on this transformational journey you will have taken the first steps on the path towards yoga.

Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root "yug" which means to yoke or bind together. The after-effects of a successful practice are often described as producing feelings of bliss, harmony, or contentment. We like to interpret this as evidence of attaining a state of union between body, mind and spirit. The yoking effect of the practice brings the individuated components of self back into balance with the whole organism, and the organism back into alignment with the cosmos. Enlightenment, superconsciousness, and oneness, are just a few vague descriptors for the state of yoga, or Samadhi.

If a stranger asked you to describe yourself over the phone, how would you comply? Many of us would use the same means as our passports or drivers licenses do by stating our name, age, height, weight, color of hair and eyes, etc. If you had a photo you might send that as well, but despite all this information, have you really described yourself? You have a particular name, but many others have your name as well. The same goes for the other descriptors which you have in common with thousands of other people in the world. If you seriously ask, "who am I?", you might find that this is no easy question to answer. Once we get beyond our given names and mirror reflections, it starts to get very interesting. In fact, this is the most important question to the yogi, and the aim of yoga is to realize the answer to this one question.

The sage Patanjali is credited with compiling the Yoga Sutras, a collection of aphorisms describing the philosophy and practice of Raja Yoga. According to Patanjali, who you really are, is revealed when the thought process is suspended. Who you really are according to Patanjali, is the Seer. This can be interpreted as a singularity in which matter and mind collapse into pure potential (infinity) or pure consciousness. The seen (matter, body) and the seeing (mind, perception) merge into the Seer (God/dess, spirit, etc) The Seer is you beyond the mind and body. The aim of meditation is to cease the seemly endless flow of thoughts, and begin to reside in, identify with, and realize your essential nature which transcends the body-mind. This state of yoga can happen at anytime depending on the present circumstances and karma (consequence of past actions).

Many of us have had transcendent flashes of timelessness in our adult life, if not many in our childhood. In fact, children are born in a state of non-differentiation or non-duality and have no concept of being separate from anything in their field of awareness. As we age and accumulate more and more ego (body-mind) identification, our inherent transcendence becomes latent; buried under a lifetime of experiential recollections stored in the body-mind complex as a means of survival. Our transcendental nature becomes subconscious because it is the antithesis of the ego mind. We must climb the ladder of the chakras as a way back to our essential nature.

The spiritual path may be born of a desire to reconcile ego consciousness with infinite consciousness. We long to find what we have lost, to come full circle and return to the point of origin or source. This reconciliation is the path of yoga and this longing to realize our essential nature is the motivation that keeps us evolving towards spiritual awakening. The earliest reference to Ashtanga Yoga, translated as the eight limbs of yoga, is outlined in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as a yogic formula for realizing our divine essence. Seven specific sequential practices must be mastered to prepare ourselves for realization of the eighth stage, Samadhi. They are yama (1), niyama (2), asana (3), pranayama (4), pratyahara (5), dharana (6), and dhyana (7).

Many serious practitioners focus solely on one or two of the practices without much regard for the others. The practices work sequentially to aid the practitioner (sadhaka) as they progress towards a more and more subtle understanding of the Self. For example, work done on the level of asana prepares one for the next practice of pranayama, and so on. Unless you have been practicing extensively in previous lifetimes, you will most likely want to start with yama and niyama since they are the foundation of the practice. This will ensure the most efficient route towards realization. These first two steps are extremely challenging and immensely rewarding to master. In this day and age, just mastering the yamas and niyamas will make you a very advanced yogi indeed.

Although yama and niyama are the first and second tiers towards Yoga, or Samadhi, they are rarely touched on by teachers and yoga centers alike. Unless, you've studied the yoga sutras in depth or taken a teacher training, you are unlikely to get much clarity on these fundamental steps in your average yoga class. This is quite unfortunate, because not only are they essential to self knowledge, but they also grease the skids, if you will, for our progression towards realization. Furthermore, looking at the state of our world today reveals how much in need humanity is of the yogic ethos. Yama translates as "restraint" and the yamas are often referred to as rules or obligations for living a harmonious life. The five yamas of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are:

1. Ahimsa: Non-harming, restraint from causing harm to any sentient being.
2. Satya: Truthfulness, honesty, authenticity.
3. Asteya: Non-stealing
4. Brahmacharya: Preservation of sexual energy.
5. Aparigraha: Non-hoarding, non-greediness.

The first yama, ahimsa, is the most important since the others are more specific actions that directly support the first. It is also important to remember that any sentient being includes oneself; in other words, do not harm yourself or others. Yama and niyama can be practiced anywhere, anytime, rather than just in class. Everyday life is the perfect classroom for practicing these fundamental yogic principles.

On the path of Raja Yoga, mastery of any one of the seven practices leads to a new level of awareness. There are seven because you can't practice the final stage; it comes as a result of practicing the stages prior to it. Each of the eight limbs represents a deeper level of awareness and can be visually represented by concentric circles expanding out from a single point in the center much like the ripples that form around a single point (tossed stone) on the surface of a smooth body of water. This singularity in the center represents samadhi, the state of oneness, or non-duality. The outermost circle represents the first stage of awareness gained by mastery of the yamas.

This outermost circle symbolizes a boundary between ourselves and the world around us. This outer ring is where the practice begins. Everything within this circle is taken as part of our self and everything outside is considered not part of the self. This becomes the boundary between innerspace and outerspace. In science, boundaries are very important since they represent areas of intense change or exchange. It's the meeting point or contact between two mediums, beings, or even dimensions. They are rich with information because each side is in direct contrast to the other. Essentially these boundaries represent the line of communication for the exchange of information. These boundaries or lines of communication range from trade routes to cell membranes to the surface of our skin to the limits of our imagination. Where ever you draw the line there is born a relationship between each side, in this case inside and outside. It's at these boundaries where the real work in our practice is done. Ultimately, we are working to reconcile each side of the boundary until we realize there is no separation.

Practicing the yamas creates this boundary on which to focus our awareness until deep understanding occurs and our consciousness begins to expand. The lesson of the yamas is that if we want harmony inside the circle then we need to be aware of the effect our actions (including thoughts) have outside the circle.

Here it makes sense to briefly explain karma. Karma is loosely defined as the cycle of cause and effect. In Sanskrit, the word karma comes from the root "kri" which translates as to do, or action. According to karmic law our actions cause effects which we eventually re-experience in our present or future life. In biblical terms, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The scientific perspective of karma is most easily represented by the law of conservation of energy. It states that energy (contained within the cosmos) cannot be created or destroyed. Energy is constantly exchanged between every level (dimension) of existence within the universe. Your thoughts and actions are forms of energy which ripple out from you into the world. This energy in never destroyed, but instead carries on constantly changing from one form to another. Therefore, whatever energy you radiate will eventually be re-experienced in some form. For example, if your actions are beneficial, you will eventually re-experience the energy of those actions as good circumstances, luck, or opportunities in your life. Likewise if your actions divisive, selfish, and negative you will eventually reap what you have sown.

Now we return to the yamas with a newfound perspective. They represent guide line for right thoughts and actions. If we filter our thoughts and actions through the yamas we are creating positive karma, and preventing negative karma. For example, lets imagine you're with a group of people and you make a remark that makes somebody look stupid. You may immediately regret your action feeling remorse, stupidity, or guilt as a result. The path of that energy immediately returned the negative essence right back to you. That's what's called "instant karma" and we've all experienced something similar. In this case you can be glad that you burned off that negative karma right away! The moral of the yamas is that if you don't want to experience being harmed, lied too, stolen from, etc., then don't send that energy out into the world around you. If you do, you're bound to re-experience it. Mastery over the yamas brings harmony between the inside of the circle (you) and the outside (universe).

The next inner circle represents the niyamas. Whereas the yamas focus on our interactions between self and not self, the niyamas shed light on our interactions between different aspects of ourselves. The niyamas are often translated as "the observances" and are as follows:

1. Saucha: purity of mind and body.
2. Santosha: contentment.
3. Tapas: austerity or discipline.
4. Svadyaya: self-study or study of yogic texts
5. Ishvarapranidana: surrender egoism

Mastery of the niyamas requires a profound level of awareness that marks the beginning of a shift in our identity away from the body-mind to a less defined and silent witness, which Patanjali refers to as the Seer (rishi). As we cultivate purity (soucha) and contentment (santosha) within the mind and body, a realignment with our essential nature results. To maintain this expanding level of awareness requires intense discipline (tapas) and vigilant nonjudgmental observation and study of the self (svadyaya). The work here is to get to the root of our thoughts and actions. Simply observing is not enough, we must seek to understand why we think and do the things we do in order to uncover the seeds of discontent called kleshas. Samskaras are habitual responses or reactions we make which are often rooted in one of the five kleshas. The kleshas are ignorance, ego, attachment, hatred, and fear of death. Together the kleshas and samskaras help to perpetuate a lower level of consciousness by contracting our awareness into ignorance and away from truth.

Mastery of the yamas and niyamas brings immense personal power. Others are drawn to such a person for many reasons. These people are highly evolved; they represent an archetypal personage that is magnetic to all levels of consciousness. They become a light in the darkness of mundane worldliness. Consequently, this marks an early, but pivotal point on the path because, as we all know, power corrupts. One who has mastered the two outermost layers of self is suddenly head and shoulders above their peers in regards to human understanding. This change of status creates opportunities that can be exploited for personal gain, or more beneficently, for the good of many. It's a conscious choice one has to make. Ironically such a person may experience envy and animosity from those still controlled by the ego's selfish desires. Wisely, in order to help us continue in the right direction, Patanjali carefully placed a capstone as the final niyama: surrender the ego. Ishvarapranidana is an important reminder to surrender the personal will of the ego to the divine will of the soul. The soul, unlike the ego, has no personal agenda and will always move in the direction of love and harmony.