Yoga Exercise Works From the Outside In.
A good beginner yoga DVD will explain, beginning your practice, you initiate a process which neither ends nor achieves its objective. You cannot “perfect” the practice of yoga. You simply will grow and evolve, getting closer to union with the quickening spirit in the universe. Your beginner yoga DVD will teach you how to move your body and mind toward harmony, peace, and contentment. Along the way, you incidentally will get a good work-out.
Yoga exercise works from the outside in.
In casual conversation, yoga devotees often stress, “It’s just such a great work-out! I always feel so good after I practice!” Many yoga beginners begin practice with a home-exercise DVD expecting it will resemble most other physical fitness programs. In a high-quality beginner yoga DVD, however, the instructor begins with yoga’s philosophy. Instead of heavy back-beating rhythm, you hear soothing music; and instead of warming-up for your exercise, you seem to relax into it. Yoga works toward union of body, mind, and spirit. Disciplining and guiding your body, your mind grows quiet, and consciousness expands to participate in the spiritual realm. The more you attend to your body, paradoxically, the more your consciousness expands to embrace all things. In yoga, moving your muscles also moves your mind.
Yoga’s benefits radiate from the inside out.
Exercising your body and subordinating it to your will, you gradually let go of normal waking consciousness, suspending sequence and logic for “organic” transitions from pose to pose. Although the instructor on your beginner yoga DVD frequently will encourage you to feel muscles stretching or contracting, and although your instructor may admonish you to direct your breath to those muscles, you generally will devote your attention to the pose and yourself in the pose. The more you concentrate on each pose and your transitions from one to the next, the more you will lose consciousness of time and place, drifting into an eternal present. This change of consciousness numbers among yoga’s greatest boons.
Gradually returning to the realm of everyday consciousness and enterprise, you feel two psychological benefits from your practice: First, you feel your mind calmed and cleansed; many of the ideas and issues that created stress and anxiety seem relatively insignificant and far more manageable. Often after productive yoga practice, your priorities become clear, and you realize you may let go of most worries, focusing your energy and effort on those very few things that truly matter. Second, if you have struggled with a perplexing problem, you frequently will find the answer has become crystal clear. Psychologists can explain the phenomenon, but you simply may enjoy its results.
Yoga means “Union.”
The discipline obviously derives its name from its goal. Asserting mind over matter, you move your body slowly, gracefully from one asana to the next, focusing on the symbolism and meaning in each pose. Strictly speaking, however, you do not analyze or negotiate each symbol’s significance in your life; instead, you commune with each creature and assume each form. As you become more proficient with the physical requirements of each pose, you learn to approach each one prayerfully, petitioning each for wisdom and enlightenment. When insight and understanding come, they do not result from your figuring them out or deducing them; instead, according to yoga’s philosophy, they have lived forever in the universe, waiting until you were ready to receive them.
Yoga’s spirituality clearly dominates reason and intellect, putting them in their proper place and perspective. The longer you practice yoga, the more you feel union between your body and spirit, and the more you feel union between your self and the ever-expanding universe
Yoga for Beginners.net