What is the practice of yoga opening up in us?

The answer to this question is paradoxical. Yoga gives nothing. Yoga opens up what we already have. According to the yoga system the biggest source of power is inside us.

Health

First of all, the practice of yoga gives us health. Sometimes hatha yoga is regarded to be kind of panacea. It is the medicine that helps to cure diseases. Indeed it’s impossible to overestimate the effect of hatha yoga. If you’ve got some disease or if you’re physically weak, hatha yoga can help to solve these problems. But you should know that yoga never replaces medicine, and if you have a disease you are to consult a doctor first. Although there are cases when medicine can do nothing and yoga can help. But once and again – you should realize that yoga does not replace medicine. The objective of yoga is self-exploration. It’s medicine that heals. Yoga deals with a physical body as well but it is only for the purpose of self-exploration. It never set a task to treat anybody. So yoga gives physical health.And so on. Yoga gives a mental health. The nerves of a modern man are extremely weak.

Moreover, look at yourself, just observe – sometimes you will notice with a surprise that you act inadequately from time to time. And it is actually a very good sign. It means you approached the understanding of your psychic health. It is caused by stress, changing conditions of life and environment. Yoga gives mental health by influencing a physical body- from coarse to fine. A well-known proverb says: «Mens sana in corpore sano» (healthy mind in healthy body).

Intellect

Third, yoga gives intellectual powers. It seems to be a paradox – we work at the physical body and we receive benefits at the intellectual one. We usually don’t expect a person who does a lot of physical exercise to be a Ph.D. So an idea of a beefed out athlete is opposed to that of a thin and weak intellectual. These two images are separated in our consciousness. Yoga does not agree with it. According to yoga both cases – in case of physical strength and absence of intellect as well as in case of physical weakness and intellectual power – needs correction. The ideal of yoga is a man that is strong physically and intellectually. The most interesting thing is that by doing hatha yoga a man sooner or later improves intellectual abilities. The way it works, the mechanism is not obvious but it definitely works. They wrote about it in the ancient times and we can see it nowadays. If in our practice we follow the principles given by hatha yoga, the inner processes go faster in our body: some hormones are produced, some nervous flows are formed, and blood circulation inside the brain is activated. All these factors contribute to the intellectual growth. If a person lacked some abilities he/she will catch up soon. So besides physical and psychic health we have the third positive factor that is increasing of intellectual power.

Creativity

In the fourth place, yoga opens up creativity. In greater part what is called throes of creation in fact are not a mental problem. Yoga says it is all much more prosaic and banal. The problem is that we simply have lack tonus. We just lack vital force to support the functioning of the nervous system at a due level, so that it could be perceptive and creative enough. We lack energy. It is like a computer – when it lacks electric energy the battery is discharged and the computer switches off. When we begin to practice hatha yoga all are systems are in such a good condition that kind of extra energy appears. If a man has extra energy then demonstrated creative outbreaks are the sign of it.

That is why for people of a creative profession it’s much easy to demonstrate this outbreak if they practice hatha yoga – the muscle energy, muscle vital force transforms in something fine. We almost cannot see this in sportsmen. To be more exact, we can only see in the sportsmen who reopen intuitively some methods of yoga in their trainings. Simple muscle pumping does not lead to this effect. Yoga gives muscle, intellectual and creative force.

Superpower

Fifth, all of us have got superpowers that we can’t even imagine. These are powers that seem to be miraculous. Thought reading, for instance. The ancient manuscripts say unambiguously that the effect of hatha yoga practice is as follows: you discover superpowers like that. The principle is the same as in case of creative force discovery. In this respect yoga did not make any difference between superpowers – as we call them today – and normal abilities. Superpowers are our natural powers that we have not been able to use yet. They are in us but we don’t have a key. Yoga says: if a person has been practicing yoga for a long enough s/he feels this door to his/her inner powers by intuition. Indeed she/he can demonstrate unique things. A healing power, for example. This is like in case of those yogis who could heal a person just by touch. It comes from hatha yoga practice.

Opportunity for fresh start

Sixth, the most valuable in hatha yoga is that it’s a self-discovery system with its own philosophy, thoughts and reflections. Sometimes you need much time to understand the method of some system. For hatha yoga practice you can be familiar with yoga philosophy or not. In other words you can be tabula rasa. You just have to know a few exercises. You just have to catch the essence of practice in harmony and do the exercises systematically. That’s all.

Once you began practicing time works for you. While you might know nothing about yoga philosophy. A cunning thing is that when you develop physically you grow mentally and psychically as well, you start to rediscover all the highest laws of self-discovery that yoga teaches. That is why yoga is sometimes considered to be spread, well-known. If you meet the word “yoga” nowadays it means hatha yoga in 80% of the cases. Although there are lots of different kinds of yoga. Breath yoga, dynamic yoga, voice work, etc. Hatha yoga is the most popular as in all other kinds of yoga you have to learn theory first and in case of hatha yoga you just need a minimum of the theory. Practice and all is going to come itself.