Read: Benefits of self love and Explore it through Meditation
Yoga, was the first fully developed and recorded system. Created by Patanjali around 400 CE, this system influences much of the yoga that is practiced today. Although most of the sutras were originally focused on mindfulness, the yoga practiced in the West today seems to focus more on the body. Somewhere along the way, it seems, we began to practice the movement of yoga in isolation from its original philosophies.
A deep understanding of yoga philosophy will greatly enhance the benefits of your practice and put you on the path to mindfulness and self-realization.
✔Self-Restraint
The focus of the first limb is on being an ethical and moral person, and on improving yourrelationship with the outer world. These values are as important today as they were centuries ago. When taking steps to transform our inner world, our outer world becomes atotal reflection of this effort.
✔ Self-Purification by Self-Restraint and Discipline:
The second limb helps refine your spiritual path. Discipline and self-restraint lead to a more orderlyand productive life. From the perspective of ancient yoga texts, life is extremely short and we need to make the most of it while we can. This limb gives us guidance.
✔ Control of Breath:
The breath and the mind are interconnected. Deep, rhythmic, and fluid breathing will energize yet calm the mind and body. Rapid, irregular, and strained breathing produces a chaotic and disturbedmind. A calm mind will give you the mental space to make better decisions and a life in which you take control instead of feeling like a victim of circumstances.
Breathing properly is fundamental to our very existence. Your brain feeds on oxygenated blood, which is supplied with every inhalation. If you are unable to draw oxygen into your body, you will become brain dead after a few minutes. On the other hand, proper exhaling helps expel carbondioxide. If your ability to exhale were impaired, you would most likely die due to the toxic build up of carbondioxide and poison. Stress tends to negatively affect breathing patterns, which contributes to achain of effects that cause wear and tear on both your body’s nervous and immune systems. In fact, 90 percent of illness is stress-related and, for this reason, attention to breathing properly is indeed, amatter of life and death.
✔ Meditation:
Just as there are many different types of yoga poses, there are many ways of meditating. Meditation is a form of inner contemplation that allows you to access a state of mind that has transcended the ego. This is a state of pure awareness of the present moment that is free of judgment.
