Spiritual Yoga as a Path of Yoga
Spiritual Yoga is a new yoga practice to integrate body, mind and spirit. This practice or sadhana is based on the ancient goal of yoga - the union (yug means "to unite") of individual consciousness with higher consciousness. Through yoga our awareness expands and we experience unity with spirit.
Spiritual yoga sadhana consists of yoga postures to exercise and strengthen the physical body; breathing techniques to channel energy and to calm the mind and emotions; and meditation, prayers, affirmations and visualizations to raise spiritual consciousness.
Spiritual yoga sadhana is a beautiful moving meditation that brings the following benefits to practitioners:
Another wonderful benefit is the commitment to yoga practice generated by the profound feelings of wellness and joy you will experience from spiritual yoga sadhana. This is a yoga practice that you will look forward to every day. There is a universal law that "Energy follows intention." It is your soul's highest intention that you integrate your body, mind and spirit to experience the fullest expression of life. This practice will become one of the best parts of your day and the benefits will flow into all aspects of your life.
These benefits will extend from you to the world, too. This is another way that yoga contributes to unity. The opening of your heart experienced through spiritual yoga practice will naturally increase your expressions of love, compassion, acceptance, kindness and service toward others. Your increased expression of these qualities will bring these blessings back to you.
This is a spiritual time. As we enter a new millennium our hopes for the future and for our world are that all people will live in peace, harmony and happiness. Our inner wisdom tells us that this can only happen if each of us lives in peace, harmony and happiness within ourselves so we can then share these gifts with others. This is the spiritual path - to live life from an open heart expressing love, happiness, helpfulness, compassion, and service to loved ones, to our communities and to the world. These are the highest qualities valued by all spiritual and religious traditions. Yoga is a tradition and a path to cultivate these qualities within ourselves. Yoga can be practiced within any religious tradition and it also can be practiced as an independent and complete path to spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual Yoga is offered to help people find peace, health, happiness and unity with spirit and with all life in our world.
"The paths are many, the goal is one."
Many people are familiar with various yoga practices. In the west people are most familiar with Hatha Yoga, the practice of a sequence of postures (asanas) and breathing techniques (pranayama) to promote physical health and mental clarity. Hatha Yoga is one of many yoga practices - the Bhagavad Gita discusses eighteen types of yoga. The types of yoga that are most widely practiced are bhakti yoga, karma yoga, jnana yoga, hatha yoga and raja yoga.
Bhakti yoga is the path of devotion and love. Karma yoga, the yoga of action, emphasizes selfless service. Jnana yoga is the path of knowledge or wisdom. Hatha yoga focuses on the physical body and the mind. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika states that hatha wisdom is the first step to the pinnacle of raja yoga. In sanskrit raja means king and the "royal road" of raja yoga emphasizes complete mastery of the self leading to union with universal consciousness. Raja yoga is a system for controlling the mind in order to know that which is beyond mind. Meditation is an important practice in raja yoga.
Spiritual Yoga practice seeks to integrate all these paths and goals of yoga--love, devotion, service, knowledge, physical health, mental clarity and unity with universal consciousness.
Spiritual Yoga practice differs from most hatha yoga practices by emphasizing:
1. Prayers to open the heart and to raise individual consciousness to spiritual consciousness and affirmations to set intentions during practice
2. Coordination of breath and bodily movement during practice to increase the flow of prana and energy
3. Use of mantras with breath to retain focus during asana practice
4. Visualization techniques to open chakras and to increase and balance energy
5. Practicing the same asana routine every day to deepen the experience and benefits of yoga.
Practitioners can add asanas to the practice routine offered on this site or vary the sequence to address their unique physical, mental, health or spiritual needs. Once the individual's sadhana routine is established and learned the body moves effortlessly through the posture sequence each day to achieve all the physical and health benefits of yoga. The focus of daily practice then shifts to increasing and balancing the flow of prana and energy throughout the body and to the higher chakras to quiet the mind as in meditation; to calm the emotions; and to open awareness to unity with higher spiritual consciousness.
Through this practice Spiritual Yoga incorporates the eight limbs of yoga discussed in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras: awareness of ourselves and others (niyamas and yamas), asana, pranayama, quieting the mind, concentration, meditation, and attaining the enlighted self-realization and spiritual awareness known as samadhi.
One reason practitioners may find it hard to maintain a daily hatha yoga practice is because we are meant to move beyond an awareness of our physical body and mind in yoga practice. Our true selves are much greater than the body and mind. It is natural to become bored with yoga routines unless the practice leads to higher awareness of the self and unity with eternal reality. You can reach this level of self-realization and unity every day through yoga.