What is Yoga?
Yoga is an ancient path of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development which is at least five thousand years old and practised by millions of people worldwide. It can be practised by anyone irrespective of age, sex, culture or religion and is suitable for all levels of ability.
Yoga brings an inner ease and harmony, with the word “yoga”, from “yuj” in Sanskrit, meaning union. One aspect of that union is that it brings harmony of the body, mind, heart and spirit.
Yoga is a holistic path of self healing and thus can help alleviate and treat many disorders, physical, mental and emotional. It can effect change on many levels from the outer to more subtle bodies.
Yoga works with the musculoskeletal system bringing strength, stamina, stability and an increase in flexibility and range of motion. It also brings focus and balance to the mind and emotions.
What can yoga help?
Yoga has significant benefits in managing stress, brings the ability to relax and can restore at the deepest (cellular) level. It improves sleep whilst restoring energy.
Yoga improves posture, it awakens the spine, helps to balance the whole nervous system and massages the internal organs to improve their function.
The breath is one of the closest links with mind and body and yoga focuses very much on the breath through the postures, specific breathing techniques (pranayama) and meditation. Working with the breath renews the “prana” or “vital force” in the body.
Yoga can help with whole system “dis-eases” such as cancer, renewing the “vital force”, particularly through the breathing, meditation and relaxation. Through this, yoga can strengthen the immune system.
Yoga can help and support mothers in pregnancy on many levels, from pre pregnancy, through the nine months up to the birth, particularly the last two trimesters, during the birth, and afterwards.
Yoga aims to effect change not just on the yoga mat but to our very being and so out into our everyday lives.
How does yoga work?
Our body has the intelligence to know how it needs to move. The classical yoga postures or asanas developed from this intelligence.
Yoga combines the practice of the classical asanas with the philosophy and spiritual aspects of yoga, teaching them in a way that can transform the body, mind and emotions, touching the heart of our being.
Yoga combines breathing and meditation with the practice of the postures themselves. It focuses very much on bringing awareness of the body, and of ourselves as we practice, developing an intuition and of a “knowing” from within.