Amanda Ramcharitar Yoga

Last week I had many phone calls regarding Yoga classes, usually i go through a couple questions just to get the background of the students experience and motivation for beginning Yoga.  In all these phone calls i had almost all the same answer “to become more active and to lose weight”.  I have found through experience most people who are ready to do a new activity like Yoga, it is because of those reasons, they have come to some impasse where they are totally frustrated with themselves and its time to move!  Which don’t get me wrong,  i totally understand yet the results of this first effort in Yoga can be so much more profound…

9 out of 10 people come to Yoga for the physical aspect of Yoga.  Interestingly in the foundational philosophies of Yoga, the physical aspect of Yoga is only mentioned twice in Patanjali’s 196 Yoga Sutra’s.  Yet in this day and age, people are flocking and swearing by the amazing physical effects they are experiencing from Yoga.  Its a similar effect Mahatma Ghandi had with his most reverent stance on Non Violence, this also is only 1 part of the Yogic philosophy, Ahimsa, yet the effect of this one man’s stance on this tiny immense principle reverberated the world over and will live forever in most hearts and minds.

So how is it, that the subject of Yoga is now so strongly linked now with physical weight-loss and exterior beauty?  In scientific findings, it has been found that Yoga has the amazing capability of bringing this exterior benefits to its practitioners due to the nature of Asana.  The Asana’s are completely rebalancing and restoring to the inner organs, muscles, skeleton, chemicals, and systems of the body.  Going to a Yoga class or practicing Yoga gives this restoration, it’s like doing a major tune up to the body regularly.  As well as the physical tune up, the mind comes into a calmer state due to the intensity of working with oneself, we meet ourselves, our mind’s patterns, on the mat, the good, the bad, the ugly.  Regular confrontation of oneself brings honesty, and thus balance.  Balance, between the heart and intelligence, brings calmness otherwise interpreted as beauty, shining from the inside out.  This beauty, yes, may look like weight-loss, but has much more powerful underlying principles.  The principles of being oneself, being aligned with oneself and expansion of oneself.  In this day and age where the pressure is on, to be the best, it is a sanctuary to step on the mat for whatever may bring you there and find yourself… the good, the bad, the ugly and importantly the beautiful natural creation of life… You.