Yoga

Yoga is attracting North American participants in numbers as high as 20 million. A recent Harris poll revealed that more than 100 million North Americans would like to practice Yoga for its health and fitness benefits.

The main purpose of Yoga of is to achieve health and inner peace. Many know that Yoga is an interesting and attracting exercise. It helps to achieve physical and emotional well being. But this is only on the surface, but on the deeper level it helps balance the inner organ functions, mental stability and improve blood circulation and the respiratory system. Its common knowledge that stress causes emotional imbalance and causes us to make incorrect decisions which affect the inner body. Yoga removes stress, helps correct and improve post injury conditions, and illnesses. Thanks to special exercises we free the space for internal organs to function properly. Massaging them helps our body function better and to slow down the process of aging. In other words Yoga is a wonderful system which is truly a way of life which allows us to stay energetic, and have a healthy and peaceful life. This system helps people appreciate the beauty of this world.

Yoga is also well known for its practicality and accessibility since students can move at their own pace through low-impact physical exercises that are easy on the joints and relatively simple to learn in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. In addition, many people today spend long hours sitting behind a desk in a stressful office environment which can result in stiff joints, and if seated incorrectly, can result in strain on certain areas of the body, such as the spine.

HATHA YOGA

Hatha Yoga, also called Hatha Vidya, is a particular system of Yoga introduced by Yogi Swatmarama, a sage of 15th century India, and compiler of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. In this treatise Swatmarama introduces Hatha Yoga as ‘a stairway to the heights of Raja Yoga’, hence a preparatory stage of physical purification that renders the body fit for the practice of higher meditation. The Asanas and Pranayama in Raja Yoga were what the Hindu Yogis used to physically train their body for long periods of meditation. This practice is called shatkarma. The word Hatha is a compound of the words Ha and Tha meaning sun and, referring to Praana and Apaana, and also to the principal nadis (energy channels) of the subtle body that must be fully operational to attain a state of dhyana or samadhi. In other respects Hatha yoga follows the same principles as the Raaja Yoga of Patanjali including moral restraint, yama, and spiritual observances, niyama. Hatha Yoga is what most people in the West associate with the word “Yoga” and is practiced for mental and physical health throughout the West.