What is yoga. Principles of yoga. History of yoga.

Foreword by Vadim OpenYoga

Yoga is an ancient, very kind, very logical and harmonious system of self-exploration. The purpose of yoga is very high: because through self-exploration a person liberates herself from all limiting factors. As a result of acquiring this freedom many amazing abilities demonstrated by yogis - who can control their physical body, their minds and psychic powers - are developed. Sometimes these abilities sound like fantasy.

Thus, by doing yoga, a person gets a beautiful, strong, ageless body, relieves stress, develops her intellectual and creative abilities, learns how to use the latent psychic powers. But this is not the purpose of yoga. All this and much more is only a "free supplement" or a side effect of self-exploration.

It is important to add that only such a self-exploration system that leads a person to a real unconditional freedom through the discovery of the universe and Self, abiding the principles of kindness and common sense, can be called yoga.

Dear friends! Do not waste your time and learn yoga! Discover yourselves, discover the world, open new opportunities in your life, grow intellectually and spiritually, develop yourselves fully, achieve success in all areas of life, become the best of the best, dream and achieve. Yoga is a great tool for realization of all your good intentions.

Foreword by Margarita Lesenkova

The importance of yoga’s heritage cannot be overestimated, and today people realize this more and more. Everyone who applied the knowledge of yoga in her life was pleasantly surprised and, usually, never abandoned it in future. But the difficulty lies in the fact that it is extremely hard to find the pure knowledge of yoga among the variety of business structures built on this concept.

Yoga is a truly unique, infinitely kind and empowering knowledge, which demands nothing from you. The goal of yoga is to make you free, powerful and happy. Yoga offers each person a path, a method that is closest to her: for some it is closer to work with the body, for some it is closer to work with the voice, for some through breathing, etc. The arsenal of yoga is enormous, and its methods are understandable and accessible, everyone will find what she likes. The main goal of the International Open Yoga University is to make yoga accessible to every person, so that everyone knows:

- What do you need to practice yoga?

- What is your wish?

- What should you know to start practicing?

- How to roll out a mat?

- How to assess if what you do is right?

-Through the feeling of harmony: when you do something and want to continue doing more!

The choice of exercises, place and time of practice is not so important. It is more important to know that you can make your lives better, to become more free, stronger, to open new horizons, to change everything you want, and to find inspiration and strength from one small step every day, from the decision ... to take and roll out a mat!

What is yoga. Principles of yoga. History of yoga.

When we hear the word "yoga", in 80% of the cases, it is about hatha yoga. That is, when we say that a person practices yoga, in eight out of ten cases, it means that she practices hatha yoga. It is important to understand that when the word "yoga" means only hatha yoga (when one takes certain poses), then this understanding is not quite right. Although, it is true, that hatha yoga is one of the most powerful and the most interesting branches of yoga that has reached us since ancient times, there are many other interesting types of yoga. It is important to understand that different branches of yoga do not exist separately from each other. And together they form a unified yoga teaching.

- What is yoga?

Yoga is a system of self-exploration.

- What and why do you need to explore?

Yoga says that every person has a Higher Self. It is in a state of absolute happiness and absolute freedom. We can describe the path of yoga in a few words: to explore your Supreme Self, revealing your inner state of happiness and freedom.

Yoga is a very interesting system of self-exploration, where we are urged to follow the moral and ethical principles. These are so-called first and second principles of yoga.

The first yoga principle is the principle of kindness. It encourages us not to harm any living being without absolute necessity, and if it is not possible, then we should follow our duty and try our best to reduce this harm.

The second principle is the principle of common sense. It is the principle of certain logic, which encourages us to direct all our life energy and consciousness only to the achievement of the goals that we set. That is, to use the common sense in achieving all the goals that we set for ourselves in all areas of life: at work, at leisure, in studying, in yoga. What is the goal we set in yoga? The goal of self-exploration.

At the same time the most important characteristic of yoga that differentiates it from other systems of self-exploration is the fact, that yoga encourages us to practice the self-exploration harmoniously. There is no place for self-violence. This is important to understand from the very beginning. Especially, it is important for those people, who have never done yoga. Usually, when they hear the word "yoga", they have lots of fears and phobias: that they need to force themselves to something, to experience discomfort. So, from the very beginning we should make it clear, yoga does not involve violence against ourselves. Another thing is that sometimes we have to force ourselves, have to make some effort. But, even making this effort, we observe ourselves from outside and feel happy that we overcome ourselves.

- And where did yoga come from, who invented it?

The answer to this question is very difficult. Yoga has reached us from ancient times. So ancient, that we can only speculate and guess when did this teaching appear and who was first to share it. Perhaps it was thousands of years ago, so long ago that no names of original authors were preserved. In that prehistoric time knowledge and tradition were not recorded on anything material, but was shared orally. And even in the more modern centuries authors rarely signed their works on yoga. But anyway, we can say for sure that yoga is much-much older than 3,000 years. Different numbers are given. Some people believe that yoga is older than 5,000 years. Some give even bigger numbers. In fact, it is not so important. It is more important that this teaching somehow has reached us. And the fact that it has existed for so long and survived, indirectly proves the efficiency of this method. After all, a huge number of other systems, including systems of self-exploration simply have not survived.

And yoga has shown that it is a very strong system. So strong, that many people throughout history understood that it would be folly to abandon it. Thus, it was passed from generation to generation and has reached us. Of course, there are the names of certain authors or teachers, who became known in the later stages of the spread of yoga. But, in fact, we do not know where this teaching came from. This is one of the most mysterious secrets of our history.

- How has this knowledge reached us?

It came from teacher to student orally, and was at least partially written down in ancient and medieval times. Some of the texts were preserved and published, some did not survive, and others were preserved, but not published.