Yoga and Spirituality: Exploring the Connect

Yoga is a holistic package for happy living. It provides techniques to unite the body, mind and breath, and connect to the inner core of our being – the spiritual aspect of our lives.

Still Yourself & Shape Up With Yoga Postures

Begin Your Inner Journey Now!

  • Get on to the yoga mat, your launch pad for a journey of inner discovery
  • Take your seat - making it steady and comfortable
  • with yoga poses (no seat belt is required, when you are so stable!)
  • Breathe easy for takeoff – breathe in, breathe out
  • and calm your mind with pranayamas
  • And just glide into meditation...

Ask yourself: Do trivial things easily throw you off balance? Are you confused? Is your mind in conflict?

The mind often oscillates between the past and future, causing worry and anticipation. Desires, fear, cravings, aversions grip the mind. To drop the conflicts in the mind, it is essential to bring the mind to the present moment.

Yoga cleanses the body and mind of accumulated stress and negative impressions. Pranayamas calm down the agitated mind. With regular practice of yoga poses, you will see that clarity dawns right away, body balance and flexibility improves, and makes you healthy, strong and alert.

Yoga & Meditation Maintains Inner & Outer Harmony

What's more - the balance, flexibility, alertness that you achieve on the yoga mat, reflects in your actions and attitude off the yoga mat too.

  • Learning to breathe through difficult postures can help you breathe through difficult times.
  • Stretching in the yoga poses to your limit without comparing with another, can lead to an attitude to do your best in a situation and let go. This attitude helps in overcoming stress.
  • Being physically flexible leads to mental flexibility. At the same time, being mentally flexible (for example: 'I can do it' attitude) leads to physical flexibility.

"The word yoga means skill - skill to live your life, to manage your mind, to deal with your emotions, to be with people, to be in love and not let that love turn into hatred." - Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

How can we obtain this skill?

Spirituality Gives Inner Strength

"For me, spirituality is all about living a happier life 'in the moment', responding to situations rather than reacting, de-programming and connecting with my Self to come with a fresh response to situations that repeat. Yoga and meditation give me just that!" shares Sylaja Kannan, an IT professional from Bangalore, India.

The practice of yoga and meditation prove to be a powerful combination and many enthusiasts like to round their yoga routine with a meditation. When the wobbling body becomes steadier and the disturbed mind becomes calmer, meditation can provide a deep sense of relaxation.

Spirituality gives inner strength to manage difficult situations and to keep smiling. Being established in the Self, your inner peace spreads outward, and makes you a more responsible human being full of caring, sharing and love.

In sleep you get rid of fatigue, but the deeper stresses remain in your body. Meditation, yoga, and Sudarshan Kriya cleanses even the deepest layers of your consciousness, leaving you rested and refreshed.

Deepen Your Yoga Practice And Soar With Your Spirit

Do you find that you can smile in any situation? Do you recognize that something deep in you is non-changing? Deepen your yoga practice and experience the joy that you are.

Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar says, "The truth about ourselves and our lives need to be updated. We need to revisit them and ask ourselves these questions again and again, 'What do I want?' 'Am I doing the right thing?' 'Am I happy?'

Spirituality is not just some mumbo jumbo, sitting somewhere and doing something. It is revisiting the truth about ourselves..."

- Written by Daya Krishnan with inputs from Shriram Sarvotham, who has been a yoga enthusiast from a very young age.

 

 

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Founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar,The Art of Living is an educational and humanitarian movement engaged in stress-management and service initiatives. Read More