樂瑜伽 Shanti Yoga

Faith without fail

One of my students told me that his wife stop yoga practice because of her  yoga teacher died of cancer. She couldn't understand why a senior yoga teacher was unable to get away from serious illness.

Can yoga bring us health? That is definite true. How many people do really understand the essence of yoga? That is the question. Learning yoga is for self understanding and self realization. We live in the world of contradiction because we do not understand our real self. So we lose our balance of body and mind. Diseases and illness are only the by-products of polluted soul. That is the symptom of unbalanced mind.

Learning yoga is learning balance, that is, middle way. How to understand the middle way? We need to have the mindfulness and righteous perspectives. Yoga Sutra mentions that wrong perspective is one of the roots of pains. And pains can be prevented.

Lots of people still think that yoga is just asana. Asana is for slim body, for body benefits, etc.  Those are just the add values of asana. Asana can prevent and cure diseases in some way without doubt. But the origin of diseases is from the unbalanced mind. Mind is the boss of physical body. Consciousness is the boss of mind.

Some people get ill but mind is peaceful. Some are in turbulent mind with strong physical body. Illness is not totally pains. Feeling pains could be another way to understand our-self. Most of the time, illness may be the effect of Karma. Karma and diseases is another subject.

Without mindfulness, we are not guaranteed to have a true faith. Without true faith, we are easily to quit and change the way. Mind is busy for outside objects. Mind is turbulent and waved. Peace is unreachable. Pains is following. We have to check if our faith is not egoist. We can know our-self through yoga.