What is Yoga?
Writer: Felix Quist Møller
21.12.22
What is Yoga?
Dear reader. Welcome to Healing Arts!
During the next months I will take you on a deep dive into the yogic philosophy as it relates to my own life and hopefully you will gain some insights in what yoga is all about.
Last time I talked about my own life and how an astral projection affected my self perception and kept my interest in yoga throughout my life.
This week we will take a closer look at what Yoga is.
The word yoga originates from Sanskrit, which is one of the oldest ways of writing in the world. The original word is just yog, but we Europeans added an ‘a’ for some reason, and it literally means to join or to unite. To unite what? Well, to unite our will with the will of God - or the Universe or the Source or whatever you wish to call it. Yoga is thus the unification of the energies of the body, mind, and spirit. In Christianity it’s like the Holy Trinity between Jesus’ mortal body, the link itself between our mortal body and God which happens in our mind basically, the Holy Spirit, and then the Spirit of no less than God.
Yoga, however, is not a religion. It does not demand that you believe in a certain religion. It is more like a psychological tool to access the subconsciousness and God within. A spiritual tool where one’s cultural background has a say in how the yogic practitioner, the Sadhaka, experiences the yogic journey, the Sadhana. This is why, when I experienced the astral projection as a kid, the celestial being that came to my rescue looked like an angel – because I went a lot to church as a kid and it is the main religious doctrine of my culture. Had I been Chinese it might have looked like a dragon or if I were Hindu it would’ve probably looked like a deva.
There are archeological findings that are more than 5,000 years old, but the practice behind the union between soul and God has probably been going on since the first Homo Sapiens. In fact, recent research suggests that even the Neanderthals had spiritual practices and some greater apses have been known to worship divinity. So, India does not have a monopoly on the practice of ‘yog’ but there are some texts that are considered to be the main contributors to the knowledge we have of yoga today. Here it is important to state that the teachings of yoga have been passed on verbally through chanting from teacher to student under the trees for thousands of generations. It's just not until 5000 years ago that they were finally written down.
The most popular yogic system derives from the work of Patañjali called the Yoga Sutras which introduces the 185 aphorisms with the sentence “Yogena citta vrrti nirodaha” which translates “Through yogic discipline the fluctuation of the ego is arrested”.
I feel like a little disclaimer is worth mentioning here! This is my personal translation, since many of the Sanskrit words don’t have a direct English pendant.
Yoga is therefore a method to control and thereby calm your mind so that you can have a say in how to constructively act in life, instead of just mindlessly carrying on with the business of the Ego.
The system of how to attain enlightenment as described in the Yoga Sutras is called The Eight Limbs, Ashtanga. Many people in the West misunderstand Yoga as a kind of gymnastics where you can look sexy in tights, but it's far more than that. Far, far more. The postures are a part of it, yes, and yoga tights are sexy, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. During the next months I will take you through the entire Eight Limbs of Yoga which I have been studying for several lifetimes (or at least since I was 21) and I hope you will join me on this journey. Next week we will pop the first path out of four paths a yogi can follow which is called Karma Yoga!
Please feel free to write us a mail or DM us on social media if you have any questions.
Namaste,
Felix
