Improve your lifestyle with yoga

Improve your lifestyle with yoga (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)

This year's New Year resolutions, worldwide, made by people from different countries and cultures, had one common thread: They wish to improve the quality of their lives through concerted effort, and so they resolved to pursue a more healthy lifestyle.
Overwork, stress, erratic lifestyle without thought to structure, and a sedentary way of life have all contributed to ill health and in some cases, even poor self-esteem. How can all these problems be resolved?
Health is the prime concern today, important for individual as well as social welfare. Keeping this in view, it's instructive to know more about the holistic concept of yoga and its relevance in modern times so that we can understand its importance and value and be encouraged to incorporate it in our lifestyle . Yoga is a precious gift; a panacea from ancient to modern living.
What is yoga? Why yoga? We just have to be aware about it. Actually we are aware but we need to know more and go into it through experience; only then it fulfils its true meaning. Yoga is an important philosophy of our ancient Indic tradition. The different schools of yoga are Samkhya, Vedanta, Tantra, Yoga, Uttar mimansa, Poorva mimansa, Nyaya and Vaiseshika. So it has deep origins. This we have got from different Upanishads and other ancient scriptures.
Yoga comes from the root Sanskrit word yuj which means to unite and integrate different layers of existence. There are a number of definitions of yoga. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, it is defined as Atha Yogaha Anushashanam. It means it is the state of discipline, harmony. Here 'anu' means subtle and 'shashan' means to govern. It reveals harmony and governance at subtler layers of existence. When different layers of personality - body, mind, emotion, psyche and spirit - are integrated, we come into a state of discipline and harmony. In order to achieve harmony we have to integrate our dimensions of personality.
Yoga is also Yogah Chittvritti Nirodhaha - cessation of mental modification. It means when we become disciplined, the disturbance in our nature goes away. Our scriptures and philosophies were born of inquiry and they became a guideline and foundation of our Santana (eternal) culture.
All philosophies were born, developed and revolved around the five fundamental questions:
1. What is this body? How does it function and how is it born?
2. What is prana or life force? How does prana relate to the physical dimension of the body? How does energy interact with matter? How does prana interact with the body?
3. What causes prana to manifest in different forms? What is the reason of creation of matter and other elements?
4. What is soul? How can it be experienced?
5. How can transcendental state, salvation or renunciation be achieved?
Yoga deals with the practical aspect of our life and makes us aware and experience the higher dimensions of our nature or self. This leads to the unity of the higher self. As Swami Shivananda said: ''An ounce of practice is more precious than tons of theory''.
We can experience a combination of different aspects of yoga in the form of Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Mudra, Bandha, Satkarma, Mantra and Kriyas. This will give a glimpse and make one aware of the subtle dimension of existence and matrix of the nature.
Yoga definitely helps us to counter the bad effects of our stressful and irregular lifestyle.