NOTHING MAGICAL IN YOGA

Articles In This Section:

· NOTHING MAGICAL IN YOGA

· YOUR BODY

· RELEASING STRESS WITH YOGA

· PURPOSE OF BREATHING

· PROER BREATHING

· DYNAMIC BREATHING EXERCISE

· METHODS OF RELAXATION

· YOGA DEVELOPED BY WATCHING ANIMALS

· IMPROVING THE BODY WITH YOGA

You have learned by now that there is nothing of magic in Yoga; neither are its results achieved magically, but by working for them. You have a good idea of its underlying philosophy, its scope and its application. You also know what you may and may not reasonably hope to gain from its study and practice, even within the limits of a form adapted to the exigencies of our busy, crowded, briskly-paced Western existence.

It goes without saying that such general knowledge would be of no use at all unless it went hand in hand with careful instruction. And, indeed, the major part of this book is therefore devoted to the specifics of Yoga practice. In Part II we shall take up, step by step, the minimal techniques which must be assimilated for complete body and mind control. Through these you will learn how to achieve true serenity of spirit and that mastery of Self which comes from self-knowledge, qualities developed by means of Yoga relaxation, concentration and meditation.

We have already pointed out that Yoga, in common with modern materialistic science, claims there is no artificial separation between that which is body and that which is mind, and that this is the logic behind the fact that all its teachings begin with the physical. Therefore to achieve the desired ends it becomes necessary to go through a process of re-educating the nerves, the muscles, the reflexes, until each part of the body is capable of controlling itself, utilizing its full reservoir of incipient power.

Naturally, however, busy men and women—for all their desire to function better—will not embark on such a program of self re-education nor subject themselves to self-discipline unless they thoroughly understand and accept the reasons for it. We are all human, and the tendency to shrug off whatever calls for even slight sustained effort is present in all of us. But we are generally willing to make that effort once we are convinced of its necessity, exactly as the mature student engineer is willing to study hard to master the basic rules of physics if he some day hopes to participate in building rockets.

Applied to the study of Yoga, what you need now is a thorough understanding of the relationship between the physiology of your body and the various exercises and poses whose practice Yoga calls for. Once this is clear, you will know exactly why you are being asked to do them and will be able to put your heart into the doing.

Try thinking of the body as a complex mechanism of which the skeleton is the marvelously flexible framework. There are over four hundred pair of muscles articulating this framework. There are parallel systems of nerves and blood vessels controlling its movements, its sensations, its responses; feeding it, cleaning it, replenishing it.

Some of the processes that comprise living are conscious, others automatic. Most of us, for instance, breathe without giving it a thought. Nor do we control the beating of the heart, or our digestive process, or our rate of metabolism. Nor, until we have learned to be conscious of them, are we even aware of the thousands of small motions we make in the course of the day, such as blinking, swallowing, shifting position while we think of ourselves as being reasonably still. In other words, we are making constant demands on our body before we even begin to use it for action.