Five Basic Approaches to Yoga

Since Yoga came to the Western hemisphere from its Indian homeland in the late 19th century, it has undergone various adaptations. Today, Yoga is practiced in five major ways:

✓ As a method for physical fitness and health maintenance Yoga as fitness training, is the most popular way that Westerners practice Yoga. It’s also the most radical revamping of Traditional Yoga. More precisely, it’s a modification of traditional Hatha Yoga. Yoga as fitness training is concerned primarily with the physical body’s flexibility, resilience, and strength. Fitness is how most newcomers to Yoga encounter this great tradition. Fitness training is certainly a useful gateway into Yoga, but later on, some people discover that Hatha Yoga is a profound spiritual tradition. From the earliest times, Yoga masters have emphasized the need for a healthy body. But they’ve also always pointed beyond the body to the mind and other vital aspects of the being.

✓ As a sport Yoga as a sport is an especially prominent approach in some Latin American countries. Its practitioners, many of whom are excellent athletes, master hundreds of extremely difficult Yoga postures to perfection and demonstrate their skills and beautiful physiques in international competitions. But this new sport, which also can be regarded as an art form, has drawn much criticism from the ranks of more traditional Yoga practitioners who feel that competition has no place in Yoga. Yet this athletic orientation has done much to put Yoga on the map in some parts of the world, and we see nothing wrong with good-natured Yoga “competitions” as long as participants hold self-centered competitiveness in check. The increasingly popular fad of Acro-Yoga, which specializes in acrobatic moves done in combination with a partner, also falls into the Yoga-as-a-sport category. Only the fittest and most flexible are able to practice this modern variation of Yoga without risk of injury. However, purists find fault with the lack of spiritual and ethical intention behind this style of Hatha Yoga.

✓ As body-oriented therapy Yoga as therapy, applies yogic techniques to restore health or full physical and mental function. In recent years, some Western Yoga teachers have begun to use yogic practices for therapeutic purpose. Although the idea behind Yoga therapy is very old, its name is fairly new. In fact, Yoga therapy is a whole new professional discipline, calling for far greater training and skill on the part of the teacher than is the case with ordinary Yoga. Commonly, Yoga is intended for those who don’t suffer from disabilities or ailments requiring remedial action and special attention. Yoga therapy, on the other hand, addresses these special needs. For example, Yoga therapy may be able to help you find relief from many common ailments.

✓ As a comprehensive lifestyle Yoga as a lifestyle enters the proper domain of Traditional Yoga. Yoga once or twice a week for an hour or so is certainly better than no Yoga at all. And Yoga can be enormously beneficial even when practiced only as fitness training or as so-called Postural Yoga. But you unlock the real potency of Yoga when you adopt it as a lifestyle — living Yoga and practicing it every day whether through physical exercises or meditation. Above all, you apply the wisdom of Yoga to everyday life and live lucidly, with awareness. Yoga has much to say about what and how you should eat, how you should sleep, how you should work, how you should relate to others, and so on. It offers a total system of conscious and skilful living. In modern times, a Yoga lifestyle includes caring for the ailing environment, an idea especially captured in Green Yoga. You can begin today. Just make a few simple adjustments in your daily schedule and keep your goals vividly in front of you. Whenever you’re ready, make further positive changes one step at a time.

✓ As a spiritual discipline Lifestyle Yoga (see the preceding section) is concerned with healthy, wholesome, functional, and benevolent living. Yoga as a spiritual discipline, the fifth and final approach, is concerned with all that plus the traditional ideal of enlightenment — that is, discovering your spiritual nature. This approach is often equated with Traditional Yoga. The word spiritual has been abused a lot lately, so we need to explain how we use it here. Spiritual relates to spirit — your ultimate nature. In Yoga, it’s called the atman (pronounced aht-mahn) or purusha (poo-roo-shah). According to non-dualistic (based in one reality) Yoga philosophy, the spirit is one and the same in all beings and things. It’s formless, immortal, superconscious, and unimaginably blissful. It’s transcendental because it exists beyond the limited body and mind. You discover the spirit fully in the moment of your enlightenment.

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.