Fancy pictures on Instagram. People in the bendiest postures that even make my jaw drop.

Yes, Yoga asanas (poses) are a practice to keep the body, joints and connective tissue healthy and flexible. But that is not all there is to it and the best thing is, it is accessible to everyone!

No need to touch your toes, bring your legs in your neck. Every body is different and so is its asana practice.  The bend you make with your body can be so very healing for you.  But enough of the asana practice. Let’s take a look at what the Yoga Lifestyle implies as well.

Yogic Lifestyle

The yogic Lifestyle is open and welcoming to everyone, to all religions, spiritualists, atheists etcetera. Yoga itself doesn’t worship a god. The only term that comes close to it is ‘Om’, which means ‘Devine’. For the religious reader this can be interpreted as God, for others it can just mean ‘all that is’. As everything carries divinity inside. Yogis respect all religions, big and small. It is all welcomed and seen as one and the same.

This is what strongly appeals to me. It gives you the freedom to follow your own path, while still practicing the Yogic Lifestyle. The feeling that everyone is welcome and respected, no matter the background makes it wonderful. You’ll meet everyone in their own respective ways and can listen and learn from each other.

Purpose of Yoga

The focus of yoga is not to look as fancy as you can, it is actually exactly the opposite. Originally the purpose of Yoga is to lose your ego.  Ego means here: what your mind considers to be you or yourself. Any attachment to that makes us not see what is real, who we really are. We for example are attached to our car, clothes, money and attribute ourselves as our job title. With that we build up our person, our status for example. But these are only air and don’t show who we really are. You are not your name, you are not your job. To experience and find out who you really are, is the journey of Yoga. And trust me, I have no clue who I am. It is a long road and if only I knew, I would be enlightened.

The Journey of Yoga

To let go of material things, labels, your attachment to this and just be with yourself that is where you can start your path. That is the journey to yourself, your inner journey of Yoga. You listen and observe. No judgment. Everyone practices it in what way is most suitable to them.

During Hatha Yoga we close our eyes where we can. To turn inwards, to connect to ourselves, our breathing, heartbeat, body. How we look, which beautiful yoga clothes we wear or who has the nicest mat is not of any importance. You don’t see that anyway, with your eyes closed…

Spring Clean-up

With Spring coming closer it might inspire you to start with a nice Spring clean-up. Taking away all clutter or unused objects from your house; decreasing your amount of clothes, kitchenware you don’t use, empty that closet that is nothing more than a hiding place with things you barely use or see. Do a good deed and bring it to your local second hand store or give it away to people whom can use it more than you do. Feel how it feels to detach yourself from materials you don’t use. It might even inspire others to do the same. Experience it conscously as with every step you get closer to who you really are.

I remember that after I finshed my Yoga training, I got home and decluttered my whole house. Buying new things even became something totally new. If you are really in the flow of decluttering you’ll notice that you start thinking with every purchase; do I really need this? Am I really going to use this?

5 pointers of yoga

Yoga implies that you take good care of yourself and your actions. How can you better do this if you are mentally, spiritually and physically healthy? The Yoga Lifestyle helps you to get there. You create a strong basis from which you can step inside the outside world with conscious actions, thoughts and behavior. If you do not harm others for example, you will not build up karma (action). You reap what you sow. What you send out will come back, as the universe balances everything out (the law of nature).

This is just a very small part of what the Yogic Lifestyle is about according the path of Raja Yoga (Yes, there are three more paths you can follow!). In the eight limbs of Raja Yoga (Ashtanga Yoga, not to get confused with the Yoga style) the points of Yoga are clearly detailed. This is quite extensive.

Swami Vishnu Devananda extracted five points out of all this detailed information to make Yoga accessible to everyone. What these five pointers are, I will set aside in one of my next posts, so make sure you don’t miss out on anything.

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