I started my journey in yoga through a spontaneous experience with meditation. I was just sitting one day in my room and was stopped from getting up - from the inside something made me sit still. For the first time in my life I became still, and silent watching my breath. I was sitting for an hour at a time and then two. I would run to my house from work to experience more of the peace and bliss I was receiving from the meditations. This was 1988. I had a real awakening. I would say I became enlightened. For about a year I walked in the truth of who I really am which is one with God and the universe and then slowly the experience became less intense until I returned to a more everyday awareness but much more clear then before.
One day I was walking back from the beach and I heard a voice inside myself say that I was a yogi in the past and that I should practice yoga. The next day I called the North County Yoga Center in Solana Beach and asked for information on yoga classes. That was the summer of 1991.
"Yoga chitha vritha narodaha" translation: "Yoga is the cessation of the fluxations of the mind". Yoga means union with self. The cleansing of the koshas or bodies.Are: physical, mental, emotional wisdom and bliss bodies - this brings the practitioner more in balance with their self and the world around them.
Yoga will align the spine on the physical level and open and purify the charkas on an energetic level. In yoga "nadi shodanam" means cleansing of the nervous system. This cleansing helps prepare the body for the inflow of the spiritual energy into the nervous system and the rest of the body. In the ancient past yoga was a way for the yogi to get closer to God through discipline, meditation and purification.
Yoga asanas act as a tapas on the body. Tapas means heat or to burn up karma and impurities. When we are practicing yoga we are burning up impurities and cleansing the koshas bringing more life forse "prana" into our body's and creating balance in our lives .
Share was the mother of a good friend of mine as I was growing up in Carlsbad, CA. After one year studying with Share I went back to study with Tim Miller at his newly opened Ashtanga Yoga Center at 118 West E St. in Encinitas, CA.
Through proper practice and devotion to yoga the yogi can cleanse the koshas and attain realization of the self. Yoga is a powerful method for self realization and or God realization, which in truth are the same thing.
The eight limbs of ashtanga yoga are...
- Yama (ethical disciplines)
- Niyama (code of conduct)
- Asana (physical postures)
- Pranayama (breath control)
- Pratyahara (withdrawl from the sense object)
- Dharana (concentration)
- Dyana (meditation)
- Samadhi (enlightenment)
