What happens when you do Yoga: part 1: Asana

10 amazing benefits of a regular yoga practice.

Asanas are the physical position, or postures, of yoga. Asana is a Sanskrit word.

Sanskrit is known as the language of the Gods. It is ancient, subtle, and complex.

The word asana means seat, or position: literally, the relationship that your body has to the earth. Sanskrit being Sanskrit, there is also an implied meaning: steadiness, and comfort.

So asana is a position that is held steady and comfortable.

Petra in King Cobra; Poorna Bhujangasana

What happens when you practice these positions in the right way (holding them steady, and relaxing into them) is that you (1) breathe deeply. Since any time you remain steady and relax deeply, your breathing will also deepen as a natural consequence.

As your body lets go of unnecessary tension (which is absolutely inevitable with practice, because it’s simply not possible to hold an asana whilst also holding on to stress) there is a deep (2) ‘letting go’. Emotional stress that was locked away in the muscles and tissues of the body, especially the fascia, dissolves. This is why people sometimes cry or feel emotional during yoga practice; usually however the ‘letting go’ is on a more subconscious level.

Simplicity. Because the revolution will not be televised.

When my wife and I first moved into our hilltop home / retreat center amongst the farmland and forests of Eastern Slovenia, we left our T.V. behind.

Hills, forest, farmland; no tsunami!

We’d decided to simplify...

Our courtship was in an ashram, and the austerity of our lives there brought us face to face and heart to heart and soul to soul in ways that I had dreamt of, yet had not dared dream of.

Our courtship was unlike any other I had experienced – and I’d experienced many; mostly fast and furious, and without real substance. But meeting Petra was like tasting a fruit that I’d never heard of before; it was a totally new, fresh experience, that burst into my senses and spread through my body, mind, and spirit.

We spent 6 months getting to know each other the old fashioned way. Surrounded as we were by Swamis who had taken vows of renunciation (my intention on coming there was to become a Swami myself!) we couldn’t express our feelings for each other in a physical way; we couldn’t even hold hands there!

So we talked when we could, but mostly just ‘tuned in’ to each other’s energy, bathing in the electric awareness of loving presence that seemed to surround us whenever we happened to be in the same room.