Is Yoga good for you?
You have been asking this question time and again to yourself.
It has been a craze lately, and some of your friends have been claiming that Yoga made their lives effortless.
But you have your doubts.
You are afraid you may not be able to bend yourself in the crazy ways your Yoga Teacher might want you to.
You’re feeling incapable of achieving that perfect posture.
In fact, you sort of dislike it because one of your cool friends became snooty and weird after she started practicing it.
You read the heading right, Yoga is not good for you.
Let me tell you why.
If your goal is a great body
Yoga is a spiritual science. The Sanskrit word ‘Yoga’ itself means union. The ultimate union of the individual consciousness with Universal Consciousness. You may hear about it through different names – Shiva and Shakti, Sushumna and Sahasrara, Yin and Yang, etc.
The point is that yoga is about raising self-consciousness to higher levels through different practices – physical and mental.
In case you are thinking of coming into it just for the body, please go to a gym or do Pilates. Yoga is not about achieving a great body, a great body may only be one of the by-products of the process.
If you are chasing perfection
If you are wondering whether you can achieve perfection of a particular kind through Yoga, it may not be the right choice for you.
There is a possibility that your headstand may not last longer than a minute whereas you see others holding it for infinity. You may struggle with certain situations and feelings, even though you practice meditation daily.
Respecting your body and mind while challenging it, is an art you need to learn. The fundamental attribute you keep coming back to as you practice is self-belief and self-love. And once you have perfected that, you will stop searching for perfection, because ‘imperfection’ only exists in the mind.
If you want to stand apart from the crowd
The one thing Yoga practitioners have to be most careful about is their Ego.
Ego is the biggest trap, and so powerful that it can manifest in the most accomplished of practitioners; ultimately becoming the reason for their downfall on the spiritual path.
One of my Tantra teachers used to say, ‘Run away from everything that increases your Ego’.
Unfortunately, often we start making Yoga itself the source of our Ego. We think we are better because we practice Yoga and the rest of the world is inferior to us. If you feel this is you, Yoga is not good for you.
It is just one way to the ultimate truth.
If you do not like discipline
This whole existence including our own body follows a certain discipline. Pick up any physiological system in your body and you will realize it is nothing but a flow of pre-determined disciplined actions.
Everything in nature has a certain kind of discipline – the sun rises each morning and the moon shines every night without fail.
Similarly, the entire science of Yoga bases itself on a certain kind of ‘Discipline’. All the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali are nothing but a discipline of a different kind –
- Yama – Discipline of self towards society
- Niyama – Discipline of self towards self
- Asana – Discipline of Body
- Pranayam – Discipline of Breath
- Pratyahara – Discipline of Senses
- Dharana – Discipline of One Pointed Focus
- Dhyana – Meditation (is a passive act, you cannot do meditation, it can only happen to you)
- Samadhi – Achieving the ultimate goal – Knowing yourself.
Therefore, if you hate the word ‘discipline’, Yoga is not good for you.
If you have the urge to call yourself a ‘Yogi’
To call ourselves ‘Yogis’ is a fashion statement nowadays.
However, you cannot call yourself a Yogi, unless you have achieved Yoga i.e, you have become one with the supreme consciousness.
According to Bhagavad Gita, “When the mind (Manas), the intellect (Buddhi), and the Self (Atman) is under control, free from restless desires, the person becomes a Yukta, in communion with the God”. Yukta means Yogi, ‘The United’.
Yoga is a discipline that you practice each second of your being. And whether you become a ‘Yogi’ is not in your hands but a matter of grace.
If you do not like change
Yoga is all about change, about transformation. You gradually leave your ignorant self and transform into a new person – with new awareness, a new perception of everything, and a connection to realms of bliss you never even imagined existed.
With regular practice, you start seeing things as they are, not as you want to see them. For example, you realize that you or the people you love are not always right and you start handling situations from a different perspective.
So if you are someone who resists change, it may find it very uncomfortable. It will challenge you each day and transform you from inside, organically.
If you intend to jump from one style to another
To get water out of a well, you must dig deep.
If you dig a little here and a little there, you will only get a lot of dents in the ground and no water.
Yoga follows the same principle with a lot more intensity, as we are talking about the ultimate goal of life here.
Therefore, unless you dedicate yourself to one of the four types of Yoga in their purest form for a lifetime, you shall be doing the same thing – digging a lot of holes that won’t give you anything.
If you love your pain
Nothing and no one in the world can save you if you have a negative attitude towards life.
People come into Yoga for different reasons, but surely they are looking for some kind of resolution to a certain situation. And it delivers 100% except for one condition – when you have a fatalistic attitude.
If you are sure in your mind that nothing can help you, you have got it right, nothing can.
Positive thinking, however, can be developed with constant and conscious effort. Also, be aware of why you are a chronic negative thinker.
If you intend to be an armchair preacher
Whether it is any type or element of Yoga you choose to study, if you are into it just to gather information, you have got it all wrong.
This one personally resonates with me. While learning Yoga, I came across many people who have an immense amount of information but still keep living limited material lives on a plane of jealousy and aggression.
Knowledge is practiced spawns wisdom, and when only preached spawns delusion of the worst order.
To come out of it must be a struggle of its own kind.
Luckily my teacher showed me the negative sides of my negative Ego at the very beginning of my journey, or else it is very easy to fall prey to false knowledge.
Don’t get into Yoga for the sake of ‘knowing’ ‘everything’ and then flaunting the very fact. Because if you do, you really know ‘nothing’.
If you have a problem with surrendering
Any discipline practiced without surrender won’t take you anywhere.
That is why many Yoga Schools and deep spiritual practice centers like Vipassana ask practitioners to only stay back if they can drop everything they are practicing already, and be there 100%.
Unless you are practicing a discipline in its totality, you will miss out on the experience as a whole.
At any given point in time, a lot of factors define our physical and mental state – including physical forces, divine forces, and our own deep-rooted mental impressions.
Only doing physical exercise cannot solve everything.
All the limbs of Yoga form a holistic discipline and therefore Mantra at the beginning of the class is as important as the Asanas. If you have strong inhibitions against surrendering to a discipline ‘as it is’, it won’t give you the desired results.
Is yoga good for you?
Based on a clear understanding given above, make a conscious decision of whether you would like to walk on the path of Yoga.
If you embrace it without any inhibitions, there is no doubt it will embrace you back.
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Namaste