What Is Yoga? | Inspiration    

There are many schools and traditions of yoga, all branching off from the same great tree that began more than 5,000 years ago. Around 2,500 years ago the Indian sage Patanjali wrote THE YOGA SUTRAS which pulled together all of the various threads and presented a clear description of the practice of yoga. This is known as the "classical" approach. Much later, in the middle of the last millennium, a radical new approach that had been growing for hundreds of years, was synthesized into a movement known as Tantra. Hatha yoga developed as part of this branch. Below are some of the most important tenets of this tradition, which draw on the richness of all the various threads of the vast history of yoga.

WE ARE BORN DIVINE. At the center of our true nature is the Self or Soul, which is one with the Universal Self or Soul (some people call this God).

WE ARE NOT SEPARATE. The whole universe is one family, literally one body. We are all part of a unified field of mind, matter, and soul. In the most literal sense, we are all part of one another, just as we are all part of the One.

WE ARE ALREADY AWAKE. Awakening involves only the process of exposing and relinquishing the false view of the self (purely ego-identified or based on what society or family has told us we are), and choosing a direct experience of the true Self. The experience of our true, awake, enlightened nature is available in every moment when we choose it. There is no distance to travel and nothing to "earn" or prove. Yoga helps us find our way back to reidentification with our true nature.

THE BODY IS DIVINE. This approach seeks to bring spiritual practice down to earth, and holds with the Tantric view that God or Spirit is everywhere. Our true nature must be realized in the body, in this embodied lifetime. Realizing our divinity does not in any way require transcending or denigrating the body or the human condition. Rather, we celebrate this body and all the pleasure and pain and joy inherent in it. Hatha yoga is practiced as an intimate trip to the core of our true nature, as discovered in the physical body and the energy body.

LIFE IS TRANSFORMATION. We learn to trust the basic wisdom and intelligence of life, to trust energy, and to transform the materials of everyday living into transformational space. How we breathe, eat, sleep, dream, move, speak, and love all contribute to the daily expression and re-creation of our true divine nature. Life itself is the path. It is all right here, right now.

EACH MOMENT IS SACRED. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this very moment. This very moment, however it shows up, allows us entry into our true nature. Our very humanness is the doorway to our spiritual connection. The challenges, struggles, pain and joy of the embodied life are themselves a bridge to the true Self, windows into the real, the divine, the true nature of our mind and heart.

Adapted from "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self" By Stephen Cope

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