Yoga is for life.

Whatever depth a person chooses to dive to within the offerings of traditional yoga the benefits are such that they can last for the entirety of a life.

There is nothing surface or superficial in the meeting with a genuine tradition of the yogic path. Such a path carries the intention of human transformation at the fundamental level of core value and meaning.

Yoga guides seekers with the means to reveal essential knowledge and understanding that directly meet the inherent yearning and questions that drive the seeking.

For over four decades we have been seekers on this path ourselves and no day is void of keepsakes that keep the journey fresh, alive, vibrant, and giving. We have equally observed that hundreds of seeking souls on the quest for meaningful living find nourishment, significant life change and redirection. Like a lake in a desert yoga can satisfy the driest of thirsts.

The texts state that there are four types of seekers. The one who seeks relief from suffering- a situation, an illness or tragedy. The petitioner who seeks abundance and life enhancement.  The seeker with questions and yearning for knowledge and understanding or the one who seeks liberation and ultimate freedom from the binding nature of the human condition.

These four categories of seeking remain as true today as at the time of textural utterance and writing which date thousands of years prior to now. People feel the pull to yoga to alleviate, to know, to evolve, to love and to become free.

The seeker of a better bodily experience will enter through yoga asana and find in the traditional forms of posture, breathing and practice a better appreciation of the purpose of a body, a greater capacity to uplift health and wellbeing and a body unified with both prana (life force or energy) and consciousness (the witness to life). They will at first come to know how to relieve the aches, pains and restrictions born of physical nature. They will then, if they seek more, come to marry the exquisite energetic potential with the physical. They may extend further and reveal the ‘guest’ who wears and utilizes the physical form for the purpose of ultimate recognition of the “who am I”.

The seeker of an improved life may find answers and knowledge to reinspire life toward dharma (living in balance). Reaching within themselves to find skills and talents that can benefit others and in so doing redirecting life toward a service orientation that gives depth and meaning to themselves and others. They may teach and share the practices and inspirations drawn from their own study with others to give benefit and upliftment. They may take the practical philosophical ground of the yogic path and apply it to life, into the arenas of human relationship, service within society and community and career aligning all aspects of life more eloquently toward essential value.

The seeker may choose a sadhana, a path of ultimate human transformation with a high degree of dedication that involves daily practice, study, and self-inquiry. The one who implements a firm establishment of yogic living will imbue everything with the intrinsic purpose of human being.

Such a seeker may dedicate profoundly and deeply and eventually arrive to an altered state of mind and being that reflects essential nature and realizes the purpose of a human existence.

Whatever is the call the result can be profound. Whatever is the need the gift will be substantial. Whatever is the yearning the heart will find sustenance and beauty. Whatever is the time yoga gives exactly what is needed.

In times such as ours the needs are for the body, the mind, and the soul. With so many challenges arising at once the very ground beneath us is shaky. So many minds are ripped from centre toward fear and concern. Survival, security, mortality, direction, possibilities, aspirations, dreams are all on hold looking for certainty and resolution. Mental illness and instability on the rise. Hopelessness and depression creeping into the spaces of ‘normal’ life trajectories. Societies around the globe stand in the face of irrevocable and necessary change.

We as people need strength, internal resource, resilience, courage, inspiration, and vision. We need much more than handouts from governments, budgets to restore economies and symptomatic approaches to health. We need deep and genuine personal resource, creative energy, compassion to gift ourselves and others, intelligence to build health bodies, hearts and minds and the ability to adapt innovate, simplify, and come together. Difference, opinion, debate, agenda, fanciful thinking, propaganda, dogma, and divisive tribal tendencies drive us further from ourselves and each other destroying any chance of sustainable cohesive ways forward. There are too many of us to build walls of noise and admonishment. We all need to know how to pause and listen inwardly to hear the quietest voice of peaceful, insightful, resolve and resolution.

We stand alone and together at a pivotal moment. We can harness the energy of the change both thrust upon us and needed to recreate, redesign, and grow. Foundational knowledge, practical wisdom that inspires pathways to balance and transformation at both the personal and societal level is the gift of the yogic tradition. It was born for that very intention to inspire living in balance with internal and external forces and influences with peace and fulfilment at the core of life.

Yoga gives an unparalleled understanding of the nature and function of mind. It guides mastery at this level. It would encourage us to acknowledge that all we are now experiencing is a direct reflection of the individual and collective mind. Mind is either friend of foe, is source of suffering or freedom. Mind is multi layered. It requires observation to release habitual tendencies and habits.

All yogic practices inspire clear and focused mind. Ultimately the mind is emptied and freed. It becomes like the sky, vast and spacious exuding the light of the sun. Such a mind casts light on the path and inspiration that exactly and perfectly meets the moment. Such a mind does not regurgitate and chew over its contents born of memories and impressions. Such a mind is aligned to essential wisdom and capacity to know. Such a mind is within reach of the genuine yoga seeker. Such a seeker becomes a yoga keeper, a keeper of the gift of the path and a giver to others.

We have always loved sharing the very real gifts of a life given to the tenets of conscious unfoldment. Now more than ever the gifts of Vedic knowledge and yogic practice are needed. The sharing of this path feels essential and timely.

For perspective to change hearts and eyes must be opened. For seeing forward, the physical eyes become the servants of a wholehearted view. For reaching past fear, anxiety and concern the turbulent mind must find calm. The way through requires an intelligence of an uncommon kind.

Yoga creates an eloquent graceful means to passage chaos and upheaval. Just as the landscape can wear snow, storm, eruption, and fire without diminishing its regenerative forces so can each of us find a powerful dignity within the seat of our unchanging fully potent essential being.

Such is the path of Yoga!

It is a gift of unparalleled nature.

By Sadhana Pezet

Co-Founder and Senior Teacher Shantarasa Yoga Darshana

Yoga Psychology & Meditation

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