Yoga

Yoga

Last night I practiced some yoga with a yoga DVD with Rodney Yee as an instructor. It is a very calming DVD practice (his wife also makes yoga DVDs but I can't remember her name). Anyway I also found an article I printed a few years ago called "The Ethics and Morals of Yoga" by Dharma Mittra (New York Yoga Magazine, June 2008) that helps me work toward my goal of being calm and stress free. I will summarize the information below.

There are 8 limbs of yoga practice, and the first two are more for the intellectual or spiritual practice.

The first limb is called "Yama" or abstention. Included in this limb are: non-injury, truthfulness, non-theft, spiritual conduct, and non-greed.
The one I want to focus most on in my life right now is non-greed. I tend to overindulge myself with food - I love sweets! And if dinner is particularly yummy, I will have a lot of that too. But in many other countries, people are not so fortunate. They are malnourished, not getting the vitamins, minerals and overall calories their bodies deserve to be healthy. I want to teach myself to be happy with being "not-full" all the time, to eat only what is necessary most of the time to be healthy and save the splurges for special occasions or maybe a special day of the week.

The second limb is "Niyama" or observance. Included in this limb are: cleanliness, contentment, austerity, self-study and attentiveness to God. I think that I should work on contentment and austerity. I would like to learn to be content in any situation so that I can help others be happy and comfortable. I would also like to be more austere, in the sense of holding onto my morals and not compromising any principles in any situation. I have already been working lately in being more attentive to God so I think I will just keep working on that.

I will report on the final 6 limbs another time!!