The word yoga itself means 'union': of the individual consciousness or soul with the Universal Consciousness or Spirit. There are various paths of Yoga (nearly forty) that lead toward this goal, each one a specialized branch of one comprehensive system. These schools are generally considered principal:
Hatha Yoga: a system of physical postures, or asanas, whose higher purpose is to purify the body, giving one awareness and control over its internal states and rendering it fit for meditation.
Karma Yoga: selfless service to others as part of ones larger self, without attachment to the results; and the performance of all actions with the consciousness of God as the Doer.
Mantra Yoga: centering the consciousness within through japa, or the repetition of certain universal root-word sounds representing a particular aspect of Spirit.
Bhakti Yoga: all surrendering devotion through which one strives to see and love the divinity in every creature and in everything, thus maintaining an unceasing worship.
Jnana Yoga: the path of wisdom, which emphasizes the application of discriminative intelligence to achieve spiritual liberation.
Raja Yoga: the royal or highest path of Yoga, formally systematized in the second century B.C. by the Indian sage Patanjali, which combines the essence of all the other paths.
Tantra Yoga: purification of the five elements to awaken your kundalini shakti. Combination of ritual, worship, discipline, meditation & the attainment of powers.
Patanjali
Patanjali
compiled the Yoga Sutras between 2000 - 2500 years ago
and this ancient and time-proven system continues to
be a map of human existence. Considered the Raja (king)
of Yoga he states that Yoga is the ability to direct
the mind exclusively towards an object and sustain that
direction without any distraction (meditation).
The attainment of a stable mind in a healthy body is
the goal of Yoga. The methods given by Patanjali for
us to reach this state are Kriya Yoga (also known as
Karma Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita) and the eight parts
of Ashtanga Yoga - yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara,
dharana, dhyanam, samadhi.
Ashta
= 'eight' Anga
= 'limb' Yoga
= 'union':
1) Yama
- the laws of life:
nonviolence, truthfulness, integrity, chastity, nonattachment. 2) Niyama
- the rules for living:
simplicity, contentment, purification, refinement, surrender
to the supreme self. 3) Asana
- the physical postures, 4) Pranayama
- breathing exercises, 5) Pratyahara
- the retirement of the senses, 6) Dharana
- steadiness of mind, 7) Dhyana
- meditation, 8) Samadhi
- the settled mind.
T Krishnamacharya
Tirumalai Krishnamacharya - yogi, healer, linguist, Vedic scholar, expert in the Indian Schools of thought, researcher, author... in other words, a legend. Born in 1888 in a remote Indian village, T Krishnamacharya who lived to be over hundred years old was one of the greatest yogis of the modern era. If today, yoga is an inherent part of the everyday lives of millions of people across the world, it is due in large measure to the pioneering efforts of T Krishnamacharya who revived yoga in the early twentieth century. While preserving ancient wisdom and reviving lost teachings, Krishnamacharya was also a revolutionary innovator who developed and adapted yoga practices that were as would offer health, mental clarity and spiritual growth to any individual in the modern-day world.
Krishnamacharya's knowledge of yoga was so vast that he taught each student differently. In refusing to standardize the practice and teaching methodology, Krishnamacharya created an understanding of yoga relevant for a broad spectrum of students. By integrating the ancient teachings of Yoga and Indian philosophy with modern-day requirements, Krishnamacharya created yoga practices that are as accurate and powerful as they are practical and relevant.
"We came from God and our ultimate destiny is to return to Him. The end and the means to the end is yoga, the timeless science of God-union." ---Paramahansa Yogananda
Paramahansa Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh on January 5, 1893, in Gorakhpur, India, into a devout and well-to-do Bengali family. From his earliest years, it was evident to those around him that the depth of his awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India's sages and saints, hoping to find an illumined teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.
It was in 1910, at the age of 17, that he met and became a disciple of the revered Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. In the hermitage of this great master of Yoga he spent the better part of the next ten years, receiving Sri Yukteswar's strict but loving spiritual discipline. After he graduated from Calcutta University in 1915, he took formal vows as a monk of India's venerable monastic Swami Order, at which time he received the name Yogananda (signifying bliss, ananda, through divine union, yoga). His ardent desire to consecrate his life to the love and service of God thus found fulfillment.
Yogananda emphasized the underlying unity of the world's great religions, and taught universally applicable methods for attaining direct personal experience of God. To serious students of his teachings he introduced the soul-awakening techniques of Kriya Yoga, a sacred spiritual science originating millenniums ago in India, which had been lost in the Dark Ages and revived in modern times by his lineage of enlightened masters.
The offical site of the Self Realization Fellowship
Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois (Guruji) was born on the full
moon day of July, 1915. As a young
boy, Guruji started learning yoga from his guru,
a man by the name of Sri T. Krishnamacharya. Guruji
went on to attended the Sanskrit University of Mysore,
where he eventually started the Yoga department from
1937 - 1973. Guruji went on to form the Ashtanga Yoga
Research Institute and has since been teaching true
to his Guru the original form of Ashtanga Yoga.
Yoga
is an ancient Indian practice, dating back some 4-5000 BCE,
possibly even earlier. It is a scientific system designed
to bring the practitioners health, happiness, and a greater
sense of Self. In yoga, the body and mind are linked to
create a state of internal peacefulness and integration,
bringing the individual from a state of separation to a
self-unity that is flexible, accepting and whole. At the
practical level, and included in the contemporary definitions
of yoga, are the actual physiological/mental techniques
themselves. These techniques concentrate on posture and
alignment, as well as creating a higher consciousness. Yoga
utilizes stretching postures, breathing, and meditation
techniques to calm the emotional state and the mind, and
tone the body.
The word yoga
comes from the Sanskrit root yuj meaning “to bind,
join, attach and yoke, to direct and concentrate one’s
attention on, to use and apply.” Therefore, yoga,
in a sense, is the joining or union of the individual self
or soul with the higher Self. Yoga means mystical union,
oneness with the universe and the disciplines or practices
that lead towards this union.
Yoga
is a technique of personal development, which existed long
before any system of philosophy. To find out what yoga is…
the best way… is to practice it. In this way one can recognize
the many faces of yoga as they are described in the Bhagavadgita,
a great work on yoga from the sixth century BC, which are:
Yoga is equilibrium in success
and failure.
Yoga is skilful living among activities.
Yoga is the supreme secret of life.
Yoga is the producer of the greatest happiness.
Yoga is affected by self-control.
Yoga is non-attachment.
Yoga is the destroyer of pain.
Yoga is serenity.
One
of the central ideas of yoga, because it is revealed through practicing yoga,
is the interdependence of all things, animate and inanimate, in the entire universe.
Nothing can be taken in isolation. In the words of the poet John Donne, “No man
is an island”. This sense of oneness of all things is often understood to be the
“yoking” or “union” implied in the word yoga.
