Now Yoga Begins...

This month’s theme is the first yoga sutra. The book of yoga sutras are a guide to happiness. Not fleeting happiness but joy that is part of our true nature. The happiness that is content and at peace. This sutra is about beginning again or from a new vantage point once we have tried everything else. This is how many of us start our yoga journey. We have seemingly tried everything else to put our body and/or mind at ease, with no success. And so the yoga begins. And to our surprise, the yoga works. Only it works on us in different ways than we expect it to. It brightens our mood as well as getting the stiffness out of our back. It allows us to see an argument from a different point of view, while improving our shoulder range. This happens because yoga is holistic. Our dis-ease isn't simply one thing gone wrong. Suffering is complex, and so is healing. This is because human beings are complex. We have bodies, but we are more than our bodies. We have our minds, but we are more than our minds, we have our emotions, but we are more than our emotions. We have a soul. This is something that sets yoga apart from modern medicine. There is a spirituality that brings humanity and sacredness into the practice of yoga. Yoga encompasses the whole. It is a non-secular spirituality that includes the spirituality of being human. Yoga is also a blank canvas that you can create upon. The uniqueness that makes you who you are is always at the heart of yoga. Even if we are no longer beginners, yoga is always beginning in the present moment. This is why we can return to this yoga sutra again and again. Yoga is always beginning in the present moment and in the Now- yoga begins.