Yoga

[elias]

Do anyone know  good resources, or to describe yoga simple and easy? what is it about? how to practice it?

[Prabhaker]

@elias

Light on Yoga is widely called the bible of yoga and has served as the source book for generations of yoga students around the world. It is the classic text for all serious students of yoga.

http://yogabog.com/sites/default/files/files/Iyengar_B_K_S__The_Illustrated_Light_On_Yoga.pdf

Baba Ramdev is most reputed and famous yoga teacher in India. His Youtube video 's are available in English also.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ramdev+english

[Prabhaker]

19 minutes ago, elias said:

what is it about?

Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are prevalent now, and many western psychologists think that yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, when you are healthy only a discipline can help then.

It is not for pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic; they are not mad they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still, they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed.

Therapies are for ill people. Therapies can help you to come to yoga, but yoga is not a therapy. Yoga is for a higher order of health, a different order of health – a different type of being and wholeness. Therapy can, at the most, make you adjusted. Freud says we cannot do more. We can make you an adjusted, normal member of the society – but if the society itself is pathological, then? And it is! The society itself is ill. A therapy can make you normal in the sense that you are adjusted to the society, but the society itself is ill!

Yoga is not therapy; yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define yoga in terms of adjustment, then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine!

If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens before you. 

Patanjali takes it for granted that you are interested in yoga, not as a hope, but as a discipline, as a transformation right here and now.

[Deep]

@elias There are two different types of yoga: physical and spiritual. The word yoga means to join or to merge. It's aim is to merge with the God within or to realize that you are God. The physical yoga is called Hatha yoga. Spiritual yoga is divided into 4 different paths. They are: Bhakti yoga, Karma yoga, Jnana yoga, and Raja yoga. All of them are difficult but Raja yoga is the most difficult. I will give you brief description of each one. 

1. Bhakti (devotion) yoga: This involves being devoted to God or a higher ideal. The love between a devotee and God becomes so strong they no longer see themselves separate from God. This is not the same as believing in God, this is about experience. Many people who believe in God don't really love God. 

2. Karma (selfless work) yoga: This involves doing selfless work for society like Mother Theresa. As a person works for society, they start to feel the separation between them and others disappear. They start to see in God in everyone else. 

3. Jnana (wisdom) yoga: Through extreme wisdom one can discern what reality is. One discern the delusions of the mind until the mind is destroyed.  

4. Raja (royal) yoga: This path involves meditation. The yogi practices severe disciplines before sitting down to meditate.

Yoga is an entire lifestyle that a person lives. My favorite is Karma yoga because it doesn't require severe discipline. It's also possible to mix and match techniques from all of them. If a person succeeds in one of them, they get honorary degrees in all of them. They are designed to dissolve the ego over time.