Whether you practice yoga on your own, attend a regular class at a yoga studio or join yoga classes available in your nearest sports centre, it is possible that you started your practice thinking about stretching, toning and relaxing. It is partially true, the physical consequences of yoga include improvement in these three areas, but there are other aspects of yoga practice which are subtle and may escape us, because we have adopted the idea that whatever we do in the physical level has a connotation of exercise, and therefore it should be linked with the body.
There is nothing wrong with low impact exercise if your focus is precisely to improve your muscle tone or strength. In fact, low impact classes are likely to be much more efficient than any yoga practice when you want to achieve only a particular physical goal, because your mind is focused on that plan.
In contrast, you are unlikely to find a yoga instructor whose motivation focus would be only your core muscles or physical strength. The fact is that your yoga practice goes above and beyond the physical body and aims to deepen your consciousness.
A very famous and well known document on yoga, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali makes this quite obvious. The ancient Sanskrit text includes verses that point out that yoga skill is attained by other means than simple asanas. Verse 2 for instance, points out that vibrational modes of the mental and emotional energies will be modified with practice, while Verses 40 to 51 suggests how mastering our psyche will show us the path to go beyond mental perception to give way into perceiving the cosmos.
These sutras or verses make clear that the physical dimension of yoga is necessary but by no means its main objective. In fact, the famous phrase “sthira sukham āsanam” (The posture should be steady and comfortable) is possibly the only verse of this document that mentions physical postures but even then, it explains that it is in steadiness and comfort that we relax and therefore we allow ourselves to give way to a deeper sense of understanding of more subtle energy levels.
You might have felt that your overall experience after a yoga class is quite different from the overall feeling after other exercise classes, not to mention that perhaps the first time you attended a yoga class, you felt that there were a lot of things to pay attention to, including the breathing sequences along with movements that did not feel quite familiar.
Inhalation and exhalation are often used as a way to draw your attention into what’s happening in your body and your brain, and holding a particular asana or posture for a longer time than typically comfortable is likely to drive you to connect with sensations that would not become apparent after just a few breaths.
When the door to deeper sense opens, you naturally strengthen the connection between the physical and mental bodies, which in turn will help you to release an emotional turmoil that naturally builds up due to excessive mental activity that doesn’t really have a healthy outlet.
Yoga actually deals with the complexities of our mental, emotional and psychic experiences and connects these with more concrete levels of experience, either through movement, breathing, āsanas and other practices.
During your next yoga session, make a conscious effort to become aware and connect all the different parts of your self, merging them to attain a state of unity. It may sound like a difficult enterprise but if you have had the privilege of accessing a yoga class or creating your yoga practice, you should certainly pursue this aim as part of your journey into becoming a wholesome human being.