Yoga FTW!
By Leo Gura - June 29, 2017
If you’re serious about your personal development, I cannot recommend yoga enough. Learn it and start practicing ASAP.
But I don’t mean the Western-style yoga you see at your gym. I mean real Indian style yoga:
- Kundalini yoga
- Kriya yoga
- Tantra yoga
- Raja yoga
- Pranayama
- Some Hatha yoga
There are many good systems and teachers available online these days.
Yoga practice is very important because it adds a physical and energetic dimension to your meditation and spiritual practice. This is vital because Western-style self-help (and even Neo-Advaita and Zen) is too intellectual. You tend to learn a lot of ideas, but gain little inner growth. And any lessons you happen to learn are not really translated to the level of your body or your vital energy.
Yoga will help you in many ways:
- It will free up energetic blockages in your body which are hard to fix any other way
- It will release pent up emotions
- It will vastly improve the quality of your breathing
- It will improve your posture and flexibility
- It will heal all kinds of chronic diseases like: chronic fatigue, cold hands and feet, allergies, migraines, ADD, high blood pressure, back pain, joint pain, thyroid imbalances, immune system problems, heart disease, PMS, depression, anxiety, insomnia, mental fog, etc.
- It will build discipline and willpower, reduce laziness
- It will increase your physical vitality
- It will reduce your sleep quota
- It will reduce stress and muscle tension
- It can double as physical exercise without needing a fancy gym. It’s like having a portable gym.
- It will gradually cleanse your Chakras and move Kundalini energy up your spine for spiritual awakening
- It will improve your meditation, concentration, and self-inquiry
- It will greatly reduce monkey mind and paralysis by analysis
Whichever yoga school you go with, make sure your yoga’s primary focus is spiritual development, NOT physical exercise. All physical postures should be a means of spiritual development, not a form of flexibility training. In proper yoga, postures are designed to iron out the energy blockages in your body FOR THE PURPOSE of deepening your ability to meditate.
I’ll be talking about specific types of yoga more in the future, as I experiment with various systems. For now, start doing your own research. The payoff will be immense.
Learning yoga is also a MUST if you’re going to be doing any serious meditation or solo retreats. Sitting for such long periods of time while neglecting your body is a wasted opportunity. Yoga will super-charge your retreats and get you more breakthroughs faster.
If you’re pursuing enlightenment and you feel stuck with meditation/self-inquiry, incorporate yoga into your daily practice ASAP. You need to bring your entire body along for this ride, not just your head. Enlightenment is not just a head thing. And if your body is in bad shape, from decades of bad food, chemicals, stress, bad posture, muscle tension, and disease, enlightenment may be practically impossible for you until you clear this up.
I will be adding a lot of yoga-related books to my book list in the future.
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