Happy International Yoga Day :)

by Kelly Blogs

Happy International Yoga Day 2017 ☀️. If you’ve never tried yoga, especially HOT yoga, you’re missing out. Yoga is not a religion. It is a science of self. However, it is the practice of meditation, asanas (poses), breathing, and focused awareness. You don’t worship Buddha while you’re there but I will say that it does bring you closer to God…at least for me it does.

According to Yoga Journal the word yoga, from the Sanskrit word yuj means to yoke or bind and is often interpreted as “union” or a method of discipline. A male who practices yoga is called a yogi, a female practitioner, a yogini.

The Indian sage Patanjali is believed to have collated the practice of yoga into the Yoga Sutra an estimated 2,000 years ago. The Sutra is a collection of 195 statements that serves as a philosophical guidebook for most of the yoga that is practiced today. It also outlines eight limbs of yoga: the yamas (restraints), niyamas (observances), asana (postures), pranayama(breathing), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses), dharana (concentration), dhyani (meditation), and samadhi (absorption). As we explore these eight limbs, we begin by refining our behavior in the outer world, and then we focus inwardly until we reach samadhi (liberation, enlightenment).

When I’m on my mat in 105 degree temps and in the midst of tree pose (my fave) I feel closer to Him than ever before. Yoga brings you to a place WITHIN yourself. You work your body from the inside out…your liver, your thyroid, your lungs, activating all your organs. It’s really very therapeutic! If you’ve never tried it, you owe it to yourself to open your mind and push past your fear of the unknown.

Let us celebrate today as the International Yoga Day and appreciate our minds, bodies, and souls in a way we never have before.  Let me close this in the way we close  every yoga class by saying “Namaste” to every one of you reading this post.  “The light in me honors the light in you” and if we truly did that just look at how kind our world would be.

Kelly 🙂