Yesterday we talked about ignorance and some people’s misunderstanding of just what Yoga is.
So let’s make it simple. Yoga, in its original form, was a spiritual practice of Stone Age shamans from the Lunds Valley in India that was designed to heal members of their community and served as religious ritual. Over the centuries—5,000 of them, to be in the ballpark—it has evolved. Like everything else.
The western form of yoga today is a far cry from the original which does have many traditional yogis crying from afar at how America has destroyed it. But nobody owns yoga. There are many “fathers” of yoga, but the real Father of yoga is the one who created our bodies in the first place. These early shamans and the ones who further developed the physical practice—called Hatha—were simply smart enough to figure out the benefits of deep breathing, meditation, stretching, and exercise.
You don’t have to know the deeper philosophies of yoga or the 10 or 12 branches of it (depending on who you talk to) to reap the benefits. You don’t have to “Ohm”. You don’t have to be able to turn yourself into a pretzel. You don’t have to worship anything. It can be a purely physical practice if that’s what you choose to make of it. And with how highly it is being praised by traditional and non-traditional medicine nowadays, it might be a good idea to look into it further.
Check back tomorrow to learn more.
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