Why practise yoga?

5 reasons from the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads to begin or deepen your yoga practice...

Yoga helps to reduce suffering and the experience of physical, mental and emotional trauma which can become stored in your body and mind. A regular yoga practise helps you to connect more deeply within, bringing you back into a more balanced state and able to see your true nature.

The ancient wisdom contained in the yoga texts is even more relevant today, in the always on, constant sensory distraction of the modern world. The Taittiriya upanishad offers wisdom from the sages of the time regarding the Koshas - the different layers of our being. Using this wisdom can assist in creating a deeper sense of self awareness and encourage us to feel more connected within our inner space.

1) Yoga benefits the physical body - Annamaya Kosha

The path of Hatha yoga is the path of yoga which focuses on the body, the annamaya kosha which can be used to access the more subtle layers of the mind and emotional bodies. The asana or physical postures help build physical strength and conditioning as well as improve cardio vascular fitness with the sun salutation, vinyasa practice. By becoming more aware of the body in the postures you can start to observe any pain or tension in the body and mind and strengthen your inner connection.

The physical body can store and hold onto patterns of tension and pain caused by our everyday experiences, which can leave you feeling out of balance and disconnected in yourself and your environment. Energy which needs to be released can cause blockages which disrupt the flow of life force energy, and can make you feel stressed and fatigued.

If this tension and pain is ignored over a long period of time it can increase stress in the body, which has been scientifically proven to be a significant cause of more serious health conditions. A regular yoga practice can help you to activate the parasympathetic nervous system which activates your body’s relaxation response and helps to reduce stress.

Beginning a regular yoga practice can encourage the body to start to release and change, softening and gaining awareness of the physical body can help access the more subtle layers which can lead to a more balanced state of being.

2) Yoga helps engage the breath body layer - pranamaya kosha

The next layer of being, according to the Upanishads is the breath body or the pranamaya kosha.

Breathing is an unconscious, automatic yet vital life process, bringing oxygen into our bodies and ensuring our cells receive their required nourishment, however it is rarely something that we consciously do.

Being balanced offers hatha yoga classes which focus on the union between your breath and the movement of your body to increase your awareness of the breath and to help to focus the mind. Using the connection of the breath and movement to encourage one point of focus to encourage the union of body and mind.

Hatha yoga classes with being balanced also include pranayama techniques, ‘prana’ is the sanskrit word for life force energy and ‘ayama’ means expansion or control. These practices specifically work on bringing more life force energy into your body. Tuning into the breath with yoga breathing techniques, encourages it to become longer and deeper which helps the body and mind to relax.

Yoga classes with being balanced encourage you to become more conscious of the breath, as this has unites the physical and mental bodies, encouraging positive emotions and a more balanced state of being.

The breath is fundamentally connected to the mind, and by controlling or becoming aware of the breath you can start to become aware of the mind. Reducing the mind chatter and encouraging feelings of inner peace, helping you to bring yourself back to a more balanced state of being.

3) Yoga helps to strengthen the mind-body connection - Manomaya kosha

The breath deepens awareness of the next kosha - the manomaya kosha, or mind body, revealing our thought patterns. The mind can easily go into overdrive, creating a lot of noise and also being pulled in the different directions of the senses, we are distracted by what we see, hear etc.. This can create patterns and habits which become entrenched in the body and the mind and can start to create problems.

Negative thought patterns including, fear, anxiety and insecurity create disharmony in the mind and body, and can start to affect both your mental and physical health. Your beliefs, thoughts and emotions can affect your health, stress is implicated in a number of more serious health conditions, and it has been scientifically proven that positive thoughts can help the immune system and impact overall health.

Yoga can help to create a more positive state of mind, encouraging an awareness of the deep inner peace which is contained within us all and hidden by the distractions of the material world. These distractions help to create a false impression of reality which leads to misunderstanding and can create a challenging environment to maintain mental health, which a yoga practice can help to overcome.

4) Yoga helps to regulate the emotional body - vignamaya kosha

Fear and anxiety in the mind can lead to negative emotions, actions and reactions.

By beginning to become aware of what can trigger your emotional reactions you can connect more deeply in to the emotional body, or vijnanamaya kosha. The emotional body can be left seriously out of balance as negative emotions and experiences can be buried deep within causing pain and tension in the physical and mind bodies.

The emotional body feels the strain of trauma and can lead to feeling negative about yourself, low self esteem, fatigue and resistance and life in general which creates negative results in other areas of your life. By beginning a regular yoga practice you can deepen your self awareness and improve your emotional health.

5) Yoga helps to connect you with your heart space - Anandamaya Kosha

Sticking to a regular yoga practise can encourage you to become more disciplined and start to reveal your true nature, releasing your own unique inner wisdom, contained within us all is the anandamaya kosha - the bliss body. The part of you which is connected to your higher nature, boosting positive feelings and a stronger, more connected body and a balanced state of being.

As your regular yoga practice encourages you to focus your energy internally, away from all the distractions of the material world, this can lead to improvements in your overall health and wellbeing.

The ancient yoga wisdom is even more relevant today for the fast pace of modern life.Take some time for your self and get in touch to begin your yoga journey.