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For thousands of years, Yoga was taught orally from teacher to student.
Not as a fitness routine, not as a class you attend three times a week, but as a relationship and a pathway.
A living lineage — with breath, body, mind, ethics, devotion, self-study, and surrender woven together.
The sages never taught Yoga as a fragmented practice.
They taught it as a whole system for living with awareness.
To them, practicing Yoga meant:
waking with gratitude
eating with awareness
speaking truth gently
acting with integrity
calming the nervous system
keep energies flowing
moving with intention
breathing consciously
understanding the mind
seeing the divine in all
and returning again and again to presence.
In the modern world, Yoga often becomes the posture practice alone.
But in the traditional Indian view, asanas were only one small branch of a vast tree.
Asanas were meant to prepare the body so the mind could sit still.
Breathwork prepared the heart.
Ethics prepared the soul.
Meditation prepared the consciousness.
Yoga was — and still is — a way of being, not simply a thing you do.
Why Asana Became the Doorway for Many People
It is natural that most modern students enter Yoga through asana.
The body is the doorway we cannot ignore.
The body speaks loudly, while the mind often whispers.
When we begin practicing:
a tight hip tells us something
a restless breath tells us something
a trembling balance tells us something
a racing mind tells us something
a collapsing posture tells us something
Through the body we learn to listen.
As someone who grew up around traditional teachers in India, I often heard my elders say:
“First we bring the student into the body,
then the body brings them into themselves.”
Asana is not the goal — it is the invitation.
It is the physical expression of awareness.
It is the visible surface of an invisible transformation.
So when you say “I practice Yoga,” the asanas you perform are not the end point.
They are the beginning of a lifelong conversation with your inner world.
Yoga as a Path of Self-Understanding
Yoga is both a mirror and a medicine.
On the mat, your body becomes:
a mirror for your habits
a mirror for your reactions
a mirror for your emotional patterns
a mirror for your breath
a mirror for your resilience
a mirror for your desires and fears
When your balance wobbles, Yoga asks:
Where else in life are you unsteady?
When your hamstrings resist, Yoga asks:
Where else do you hold tension?
When your breath shortens, Yoga asks:
Where else do you feel constricted?
When you soften your jaw or unclench your hands, Yoga whispers:
What are you holding that you can release?
To practice Yoga means to observe yourself without judgment,
to understand the layers of conditioning,
to meet every part of yourself — even the uncomfortable parts — with compassion.
Yoga is the art of being with what is.
Not escaping it.
Not fixing it.
Not controlling it.
Just being with it.
The Heart of Yoga — Devotion, Surrender, and Humility
In India, Yoga is not a performance.
It is a prayer.
Not necessarily to a deity, but to the truth within.
Devotion in Yoga is not limited to religion —
it is the feeling of reverence for life itself.
This devotion takes many forms:
gratitude
humility
wonder
surrender
openness
honesty
When you bow at the end of practice, you are bowing to the teacher within.
You are bowing to the part of you that is timeless, spacious, and wise.
The heart of Yoga is surrender.
Not the kind that means giving up —
but the kind that means letting go of resistance.
Letting go of the need to control everything.
Letting go of the obsession with outcomes.
Letting go of the pressure to be perfect.
To practice Yoga is to soften.
To open.
To trust.