Basic Attitudes of Yoga and Meditation

Spiritual progress should be natural, not forced- like a growing tree, not like the frenetic struggle of minor actors to achieve fame.

Think of how many things you do in the hope of resting after you’ve finished them. Let me buy that racy sports car,” you think, “or that handsome station wagon for the whole family. Then I’ll be able to relax and really enjoy life.”

Or you may think, “Once I get that new house, with the shaded porch and the large master bedroom; that sunny dining room so we won’t have to eat any longer in the kitchen with the cucumbers; that sunken living room-ah, then I’ll find peace and be able to enjoy life at last!”

Thus you acquire the habit of looking for more and more things, more and more ways of resting better and enjoying life more fully after the acquisition of and after the accomplishment. The irony is that in the very seeking you lost the capacity to rest at all. Thus you never really get to enjoy life. Experiencing more and more stress in the seeking, you lose the ability to relax even after you’ve “arrived”.

An important rule in life is: Don’t be impatient. This rule is doubly important for meditation, for whereas the general stricture against impatience gives hope of finding inner peace in meditation, that hope is demolished if one applies to meditation itself attitudes that we’ve developed in the “rat race.” To find God, it is better to be a long-distance runner than a sprinter. Today’s meditative efforts will have to be renewed tomorrow, and again the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, and so on for as long as it takes to achieve the consciousness of the eternal now.

Paramhansa Yogananda was asked once, “Does the spiritual path have any end? “No end,” he replied. “You go on until you achieve endlessness.”

Don’t let your approach to meditation be so achievement-oriented that you end up mentally tense. Yogananda, noting my own tendency toward impatience, once said to me, “The principle of karma yoga applies to meditative action also. Meditate to please God. Don’t meditate with desire for the fruits of your meditations. It is best, in the beginning, to emphasize relaxation.”

Of course what he meant was, don’t desire fruits that accrue to your ego. For it is the ego, not the soul, that experiences impatience. Patience is the fastest path to God, because it develops soul-consciousness.

From The Promise of Immortality
by Swami Kriyananda
Photo: Jose Fares

Discover your spirituality with yoga

Yoga has many beneficial effects if you practice it on a regular basis; it is known to help if major illnesses as well as being undertaken by those who just want to get fitter and healthier. There is so much more to yoga however, yoga is a total holistic system that can strengthen not only the muscles but also the mind. Those who practice yoga on a more serious level think of it as a totally spiritual experience and benefit on a spiritual level deeply.

The majority of people who practice yoga do so because of the way that their whole system, their body, mind and soul is brought together and the totally peaceful feeling that this brings out in the person. Yoga helps to bring and harmonize the body, mind and spirit that are essential to a happy lifestyle.

The Chinese have long believed that illness develops due to the body becoming out of sync and that symptoms are just a sign of a more deeper underlying problem. They believe that there is an energy force that flows throughout the body and it is when this energy force is blocked that problems begin to arise within the body. Yoga is one way of ensuring that the flow of energy is kept running freely throughout the body, yoga can help to achieve this many ways, the poses are specifically designed to open up the chest, the heart, the lungs and to strengthen the body functions such as the immune system.

One of the aspects of yoga is to help the person develop their spirituality and to let it flow, to look into themselves and the person they are instead of running away and putting the blame on anything else but themselves. Those who develop their spirituality have found that they are able to feel free, happy and are able to deal with and overcome problems that previously would have had them in knots.

Feeling good about oneself is essential in dealing with a wide variety of problems and indeed if you are able to deal and understand yourself and the problems that affect you then very often these problems simply disappear. One oft eh easiest ways to start looking into yourself and finding your spiritual side is to start off with the yogic breathing exercises. Yogic breathing helps the person to settle down and relax and to look inside him or herself and discover the person they really are.

Hatha yoga breathing relies on focusing on the exhalation; Westerners seem to put importance on inhalation when in fact this is wrong. Changing the way we breathe can vastly change how we feel as well as our outlook on life. When practicing Hatha yoga to develop your spirituality breathe in slowly though the nose fully, yogic breathing focuses strongly on silent breathing, if you are breathing correctly then you shouldn't be able to hear yourself breathe. When exhaling, be sure that you do so from your abdomen and make sure that you push the air out of your body totally. This is the simplest way to perform yogic breathing to develop and bring forth your spirituality.

by icamm

Yoga Helps Fight Asthma

Asthma is a respiratory disease characterized by chronic inflammation, labored or shortened breathing, wheezing, coughing and sticky mucous from chest. Before we get into discussing the details of this disease, a brief snapshot of what follows in the paragraphs below would be helpful. We will discuss the health benefits of yoga with focus on yoga and asthma with a dedicated section on yoga poses for asthma.

The Symptoms of Asthma

Symptoms of asthma are all apparent unlike certain other diseases. The first symptom that shows up is inflammation in the trachea (wind pipe, connecting throat to lungs) immediately followed by tightness in the chest or shortness of breath. When the asthma attack goes to unmanageable limits, you feel complete constriction of the wind pipe and chest. At this time it is extremely difficult to breathe. But much before this condition is reached; you have sufficient warning signals such as the wheezing sound while exhaling and inhaling (breathing) due to the presence of sputum in the respiratory system, coughs etc.

What Triggers Asthma

Some common triggers leading to asthmatic symptoms are allergens like cold, house dust, pollen, animal dander, irritants such as smokes, chemical fumes etc. For some people, in certain cases, stress from emotional and exercising reasons can trigger the symptoms.

Some Statistics on Asthma

Asthma is not known to take death toll unless proper and timely care is not taken. However, the figure of asthma deaths has been on the rise since 1970s in the United States as well as around the globe. There are about 20 million asthma sufferers in the United States itself. What is alarming is slightly less than half of them (about 9 million) are children below 18 years. Out of the total asthmatics, about 70% have other allergies and 10 million of Americans suffer from allergic asthma. Cases of asthma in children have shot up by a mind boggling 160% is the 1980-1994 period. Incidences of reported deaths have mounted to 5000 annually and direct cost of treatment is pegged at $11.5 billion and indirect costs at %4.1 billion. Prevalence is 39% higher in African Americans than white Americans. Total loss of work days is 24.5 million and school days lost is 12.8 million.

Some Yoga Poses that Help in Combating Asthma (Yoga for Health)

Here is a list of yoga poses for asthma. Regular practice of these workouts for asthma helps you combat asthma attacks better. There have been debates on how yoga and asthma relate to each other. But studies show that certainly there are definite health benefits of yoga.

Easy Yoga Pose

Sukhasana, is the easiest of the yoga poses for asthma as far as yoga and asthma goes. Sitting erect on the floor, cross your legs and clasp your knees easily and that's it. Breathe easy for 5 minutes.

Shoulder Lifts

Lie down flat on floor on your back with your hands stretched above head. Relax for a couple of breaths and slowly lift up shoulders towards front together with head crouching abdomen as in curls. Inhale as you get up and exhale when retracting.

Sun Salutation

Yoga sun salutation (Surya namaskara) is a combination of 12 poses in a sequence beginning and ending in stand-at-ease pose, the 5th and 6th of them being standing on four limbs with body horizontal to the ground while forehead and nose touches ground. The sequential breathing series during the Sun Salutation prepares respiratory mechanism for the asthma combats. This is also helpful for backaches. This is among the top 10 yoga asana to relive asthma.

Kapalabhati Breathing Technique

Yoga and asthma cannot distance themselves from pranayama, a highly meditated breathing technique. Kapalabhati requires that you breathe rapidly in short sequences and consciously control the movements of the diaphragm (a membrane separating abdomen from chest.) This exercises the entire respiratory system.

Anuloma Viloma Breathing Technique

This is known as alternate nostril breathing technique. You inhale through one nostril and exhale through the other with a long retention of the breath in between. This brings breathing a much needed rhythm.

From: yogamiracles.com

Church opens doors to yoga

Washingtonville — The only light inside St. Anne's Episcopal Church this Monday night is that of a small lamp next to a CD player emitting a composition of flute and electronic keyboard music.

Standing next to the lamp on an exercise mat is Linda Dougherty, instructing her students to bend forward with legs apart and arms outstretched.

"Think: 'Oh God, let me bow down in front of you in honor of you,'" she said.

Such pronouncements pepper the entirety of the 45- to 50-minute session of bending, stretching and meditating that Dougherty teaches at the Washingtonville church each week. It's part of a growing Christian yoga movement that has recently entered our region, joining Eastern techniques in health and spiritual fitness with the West's largest religion.

The rise of the trend in 2005 brought criticism from Christian and Hindu purists, who believed the Indian spiritual roots of yoga were irreconcilable with the West's religion. Pope Benedict XVI had once even signed a Vatican document warning Catholics to beware of Eastern traditions like yoga, which "can degenerate into a cult of the body."

Groups such as the American Yoga Association, however, deride such extremism. According to the nonprofit's Web site, the practice does not involve the worship of a deity nor conform to any one world religion.

"Many American Yoga Association students who practiced yoga intensively for many years continue to follow the religious traditions they have grown up in or adopted without conflict," the organization said on the Web site.

The controversy involving yoga and Christianity never came up at St. Anne's, where Dougherty introduced the classes in December, she said.

Dougherty was training with Yoga Mountain in Cornwall-on-Hudson for more than a year before mentioning her interest in the practice to her priest. A school social worker in Suffern, she noticed the health and mental benefits of the practice on her students. She received the priest's blessing to begin the teachings to other parishioners as part of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas.

The students enjoyed it so much, they asked Dougherty to keep it up, which she did.

A $10 donation is requested to help with expenses, as well as an offering to the church. Class membership varies from five to eight students.

Yoga opens the mind to one's inner spirituality through meditation, Dougherty said. "As you're moving through the postures and breathing, you also get the added benefits of good health."

By John Sullivan