Yoga is a traditional art rooted in the concept of self-development and absolute awareness. It is a discipline to improve and develop one's inherent power in a balanced manner. It offers the means to attain complete self-realization leading to liberation.
Yoga is a Sanskrit word that expresses the notion of union. The union of the mind and the body, to unite into an integral whole – One whole or Eka Yoga; bringing aboutthe union of individual energy and cosmic energy.
At Eka, through our various offerings and practices, we help you manifest your innermost true potential and abilities, to transform your lives towards peace, love and inner happiness. The yoga we teach, helps increase our concentration and focus levels, leading to more overall awareness and receptivity. This awareness can used as a tool to understand the self and the world around us better. So, incorporating our yoga practice into your daily lives, will help you increase your self awareness levels, as well as your relationships in the outside world. Integrating this concept of Eka into our lives, opens up our energies towards the true union of mind-body-breath, which helps us experience overall emotional and physical bliss. One could call this a state of joy, inner peace - an inner transformation beckoning nirvana, a sense of true liberation and freedom.
Practicing the art of yoga mindfully, with one pointed awareness and focus, is a deep meditation. When we coordinate our mind-body-breath with every posture / asana we are transported to a meditative state of being. This dynamic meditation, like any other form of meditation, brings us closer our true inner self. The energy created through the practice of yoga, helps in deeply calming the mind and relaxing the body.
At Eka we help you explore a yoga practice that is suited to your personal needs – emotional, mental and physical. We develop a practice to help you reach a state of meditation at your own pace, comfort and ease. This practice is a blend of
Asanas (postures)
Pranayama (deep breathing techniques)
Chanting (dynamic rhythmic mantra recitation)
Bandhas (inner body locks to raise energy levels)
Yoga Nidra (deep relaxation induced sleep)
Relaxation and restoration (sequence of postures)
Yoga Therapy (Yoga postures, pranayama, meditation to treat a variety of physical and mental health conditions)
Yoga is an Indian spiritual and ascetic discipline, a part of which includes breath control, meditation, concentration, focus, elevating our energy, and the adoption of specific bodily asanas or postures. In the ancient times, yoga in India was widely practiced primarily to awaken to the true self and transcend ones lower nature to attain a state of enlightenment. You can say – ones personal yoga practice was a journey to explore an authentic sense of absolute truth, unconditional happiness and universal awareness, within the self. A state that is not dependent on any external factor, but only reliant on the self. Yoga even today, if practiced like it is meant to – mindfully as a meditation and as an art form, can be extremely effective in tapping into our true-nature.
So, how does this happen? As we get into any one of the 300,000 available yoga postures or asanas, and hold or maintain our balance in that posture, we create a subconscious union of our body and mind. By particularly focusing all our attention and awareness on balancing, we try and find our body’s natural center point in that posture, to steadily hold it without tipping over. In doing so, the mind and the body become fully engaged in balancing the posture. Through this practice of balancing we are at a very deep, subconscious level training the mind to be completely present, mindful and still, and but of course completely centered and connected to the body. In other words we can call it a form of dynamic meditation – where the body and the mind come together in an all-embracing sense of balance, peace and harmony.
A daily and consistent practice of yoga helps us become more mindful, present, attentive and aware of ourselves, and our surroundings. When we as individuals truly awaken to reality – we realize an essential fact, that we ourselves shape our own existence. It is our thoughts, our words and our actions that we chose to adopt and implement in our daily lives that define who we really are. Everything we are engaging with in our daily life progressively becomes a greater part of us. We start living and experiencing our lives very differently. We start paying more attention and awareness to our every thought, our words and our actions. We come to realize that all our experiences are in fact forming a type of ‘memory’ – a blue print of familiarities in our mind, body and energy. We refer to this as mind memory, body memory and energy memory. These thoughts, words and actions, slowly with time start becoming more habitual responses, unconditional reactions; which in time becomes our behavior. This behavior soon starts defining us – becomes our character, our personality and it is this that shapes us into who we are and who we become – our present and future selves.
Thus we can say, though the awareness that comes with our consistent yoga practice – we can purposefully transform ourselves (and our lives) by making conscious choices to become what we truly want for ourselves. So, by giving more energy and attention to our thoughts, words and actions, we can constructively create a self that we chose to create, instead of unconsciously floating our way though life in complete darkness – being asleep even when are awake.
A daily practice of yoga has a range of unfathomable benefits at the mental, spiritual, intellectual, astral and physical level. It is a process of purification – a gradual progression towards developing a self that is energetic, aware, happy, healthy and conscious.
Our daily practice of yoga also instills in us a sense of discipline, dedication, commitment and responsibility– four extremely essential life constructs that help us clearly observe our patterns and behaviors. Making it easier to identify and accept within us, all our positive and negative patters and tendencies and then intern bring about the required changes towards a more positive and peaceful life.
As we continue our yoga practice we spiritually and emotionally align the body, mind and our energies. This alignment brings about a sense of stillness within, where we do away with the mental chatter in the mind or what you might call the fluctuations and inconsistencies of the mind (also referred to as stress). Calming down the mind, through the silence of yoga helps us make space in our life for our inner wisdom and intuition to effortlessly emerge, and shine forth, from within. Through yoga we progressively create more mental peace, balance, equilibrium, mental clarity and stability within, and as a consequence, in all aspects of our daily life.
In addition, the heat generated in the body during the practice of yoga, while we coordinate our breath with our movements – is fundamentally destroying our lower nature or our negative tendencies at a subconscious level. The more regularly we practice yoga the deeper we burn away negativity from our lives (also called the inner 6 poisons). These are tendencies like, desire, anger, delusion, greed, envy and sloth, to name a few.
Increases over all balance in the body - emotional, mental and physical balance
Energizes the body and balances our energies
Alignment of our chakras (energy centers) - energy alignment
Increasing our inner vibrational frequency – a state of high energy
Builds intuition and inner wisdom
Emotional stability and balance
Stillness of the mind – reduces mental chatter / unwanted thoughts
Mental peace and a state of relaxation and calmness
Calms the body and the mind - inner peace and stability
Increases concentration and focus
Increases over all awareness levels
Improves over all breathing, respiration, energy and vitality
Maintains a balanced metabolism rate
Improves digestion and regulates bowel movements
Activates the organs, by increasing blood circulation in the body
Increases over all flexibility
Increases muscle strength and tone
Improves body alignment – shoulders, hips, spine
Activates and flexes the spine – the central most important part of the body
Improves spinal strength – increasing overall energy levels
Helps with weight reduction
Improves cardiovascular and circulatory health
Improves athletic performance
Improves mobility of joints
Strengthens all joints – ankles, knees, shoulders and wrists
Improves over all mental, emotional and physical well being
The over all practice of yoga is meant to ensure that the body does not get in the way of daily living! Making the body agile, supple, limber and flexible that it flows through our life as we wish it to.
Eight Limbs of Yoga
There are essentially eight aspects to our complete yoga practice:
Yamas
These are ‘Restraints’ – Values of Social Harmony. There are 5 values:
Ahimsa – Non Violence
Satya – Truthfulness
Bhramcharya – Sustaining Energy / Not Depleting your Vitality
Asteya – Non Stealing
Aparigraha – Non Possessiveness / Non Accumulation
Niyamas
These are ‘Observations’ of the self, inner attributes – Values of Personal Harmony. There are 5 Niyamas:
Saucha – Purity
Santosha – Contentment / Peace
Tapas – Austerity / Tolerance
Swadhyaya – Self Study / Study of the Scriptures
Ishwara Pranidhana – Devotion to a higher power
Asana
This is the practice of consistently performing a wide range of asanas or postures to maintain physical and mental well being and inner balance. Our daily asana practice helps us grow towards self-discovery and liberation. There are 2 categories of poses
Cultural Poses
Meditative Poses
Pranayama
This is a breathing technique used to bring about balance. It is a breath control technique to balance our hormones, enzymes and overall energies. There are a wide range of Pranayama practices
Pratyahara
This is the art of withdrawing from our senses. Once could refer to it as a state of restful stillness within the body and the mind.
Dharana
The aspect of Dharana could be defines as a state of Concentration and single minded Focus. Holding the mind and the body steady.
Dhyana
From Drarana we gradually slip into Dhyana – a state of continues focus and Meditation.
Samadhi
This is the last and final state; it is the state of Super Consciousness, where individual awareness dissolves into the greater whole. This state can be referred to as a state of being that maintains single minded focus – Concentration becomes is constantly state.
