Power of yoga

Reading from Tuesday, February 21, 2012 yoga class

"To the novice, yoga appears to be primarily physical, and it's often misunderstood as such.  From a cursory glance, it appears to be merely a practice of moving the body in and out of postures, but this is a conclusion of great error.  Imagine a person who could not read, and had never even heard of a book.  Now imagine this person coming upon someone on a park bench reading a life-changing novel.  The illiterate person would only see a woman on a bench, staring at a box-shaped object, sitting very still and apparently doing absolutely nothing.  This is because he cannot see within the reader's mind and heart and experience what the reader is experiencing.  Similarly, if someone who knew nothing of yoga peeked through the window of a yoga school, they would see what might appear to be "just a stretching class."  Because of the observer's background in sports or dance, this would be a reasonable assumption.  But again, this assumption would be far from accurate.  The ultimate power of yoga lies beyond what the eye can see. 

Conscious breathing combined with the various yoga postures is healing and harmonizes your nervous system.  This is how it works:  A calm and centered person makes different decisions than a stressed person does.  An angry person chooses differently than a joyful one.  When the nervous system is harmonized, we begin to resonate with calmer people and places.  We slowly discover that we don't need such intense stimuli to feel alive, so we let go little by little, almost unconsciously, of negative habits, foods, and substances.  We need fewer stimuli yet feel more alive.  These apparently small changes accumulatively redirect the course of our life.  We find ourselves on a new road, and are astonished at how it all happened."

From the book, "A Life Worth Breathing" by Max Strom