Sport Yoga

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The word Yoga is derived from Sanskrit, one of the world’s most ancient languages, which means "to yoke" or to unite. It is a technique to join together the parts in order to create a union or balance of a person’s body, mind, and spirit. Yoga is one of six fundamental systems of Indian thought collectively known as darsana, or "sight"; a way of seeing. As one of the classical darsanas, the yoga path is actually a very precise and tangible metaphysical methodology for developing a greater clarity of the way in which we "see" and "know" ourselves. Yoga can also be defined as ‘mindfulness’, or the process of directing the attention towards whatever it is we are doing at the moment.

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1) You have to be flexible to start Yoga. Wrong! Yoga will make you flexible, in mind and body.

2) Yoga is easy. Yoga is not easy. It is challenging on many levels - physically, emotionally, and mentally.

3) Yoga is about accomplishing Pretzel Poses; Goal-oriented yoga isn’t yoga at all. Yoga is a process-oriented activity in which what you experience is much more important than what you achieve.

4) Yoga is boring! There is nothing more interesting than watching the workings of your own mind. Awakening the Mind through the practice of yoga, we learn about ourselves and our perceptions that create our world.

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Yoga is a tool to enhance your health, strengthen your body, create greater mental clarity, and deepen self-awareness. Some of the clinically documented benefits of yoga are:

Until recently many Western scholars thought that yoga originated around 500 BCE, which is the time of Gautama the Buddha the founder of Buddhism. We now know that it originated in India 5,000 or more years ago. In the early 1920’s, archeologists surprised the world with the discovery of the so-called Indus civilization – a culture that we now know extend over an area of roughly 300,000 square miles. This was in fact the largest civilization in early antiquity. In the ruins of the cities of Mohenjo Daro and Harappa, excavators found depictions engraved on soapstone seals that strongly resemble yogi-like figures. Many other finds show the amazing continuity between that civilization and later Hindu society and culture.

There is nothing primitive about what is now called the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, which is named, after two great rivers that once flowed through northern India. This civilization enjoyed multistoried buildings, a sewage system unparalleled in the ancient world until the Roman empire, a huge public bath whose walls were water proofed with bitumen, geometrically laid out brick roads, and standardized baked bricks for convenient construction. The Indus-Sarasvati civilization was also a great maritime nation that exported a large variety of goods to Mesopotamia and other parts of the Middle East and Africa.

For along time, scholars thought that invaders from the northwest abruptly destroyed this civilization who called themselves Aryans (arya meaning "noble" in the Sanskrit language). Some proposed that these warlike nomads invented Yoga, others credited the Indus people with its creation. Yet others took Yoga to be a joint creation of both races. Nowadays researchers are coming to the conclusion that there never was an Aryan invasion and that the decline of the Indus-Sarasvati cities was due to dramatic climatic changes. These in turn appear to have been caused by a major tectonic catastrophe changing the course of the rivers. In particular, it led to the drying up of what was once India’s largest river, the Saeasvati. The drying up of the Sarasvati river, which was complete by around 1900 BCE, forced the population to migrate to more fertile land, especially east toward the Ganges river and south into Central India. What does all this have to do with the history of Yoga? Well it just happens that the Sarasvati River is the most celebrated river in the Rig-Veda, which is the oldest known text in any Indo-European language (Sanskrit is like an older brother to the other Indo-European languages such as Greek, Latin, and German). Thus, if the Sarasvati River dried up around 1900 BCE, the Rig-Veda must be from an earlier date. If that is so, the composers of this text must have been contemporaneous with the people of the Indus civilization, which flourished between circa 3000-1900 BCE. Astronomical references in the Rig-Veda suggest that at least some of its 1,028 hymns were composed in the 3^rd or 4^th millennium BCE.

Thus, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans, who created the Rig-Veda, did not come from outside of India to destroy the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. They had been there all the time. There is a growing understanding that the Aryans and the Indus-Sarasvati people were one and the same. This means that Yoga is the product of a mature civilization that was unparalleled in the ancient world.

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It is said that the great sages developed parallel concepts of yoga, evolving out of their relationship and harmony with nature. They were ascetics, living a strict and disciplined lifestyle. Through the millennia and particularly, in the south of India, the ‘yogis’ as they were known, were vegetarians, wore minimal clothing, and lived literally close to the earth learning directly from nature. They observed that in nature, the bodies of animals were almost always perfectly balanced. The animals exhibited profound flexibility, strength and endurance and were always living in balance with their environment. Animals, the yogis observed, showed little fear or anxiety and did not appear to worry about the past or future. The yogis using their deepest intuition, intelligence, and experience became familiar and instinctual about the energy flowing through all life forms. They developed natural ways to access, build, nurture, and direct the energy for greater health and spiritual awareness, thereby allowing them to merge with Universal Consciousness. The history of Yoga can be divided into the following four broad categories: Vedic, Preclassical, Classical, and Postclassical. These categories are like static snapshots of something that is actually in continuous motion.

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What is Power Yoga? Power Yoga (a.k.a. Ashtanga Yoga) is a unique form of Hatha yoga that uses Vinyasas to create a dynamic and energetic yoga practice. The term vinyasa refers to the breath-synchronized movments that link the various yoga postures together, creating a "dynamic flow" throughout the practice. One of the main functions of the vinyasa is to generate an intense heat called agni within the internal organs that will then permeate throughtout the rest of the body. The vinyasa itself is based on the Sun Salutation (shown below).

Is based on the principle that as strong and as healthy a body as possible is needed on the journey toward enlightenment. The experience of practice is concentration, breath, endurance, flexibility and stretching, aligning and strengthening the body, quieting the mind and awakening the spirit.

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