WHAT IS YOGA ?

TEACHER TRAINING YOGA : WHAT IS YOGA?

Stop what you are doing. Stand up, take a deep breath and have a really good stretch. Standing on tiptoes, make yourself as tall as possible with your hands reaching up to the sky and your fingers splayed. Breathe out slowly, and slowly resume your normal standing posture. Now doesn't that feel good? Do the muscles in your arms and legs feel relaxed and yet energized? Can you feel the blood tingling in your hands and feet? Does your mind, be it only for a fleeting moment, seem to have taken a breather from its daily round of thoughts and worries? If your answer is yes, then you are feeling the benefits of yoga already.

Yoga is a system of mental and physical exercises design to instill a sense of calm and happiness in the practitioner. Its origins are lost in the mists of time, though estimates suggest that it has been practiced in India for over five thousand years, and is believed to have been inspired by the contemplation of animals, exceptionally cats, as they stretched. Observers noted that, after a good stretch and arch, the animal's energy and alertness was increased, and so they sought to utilize this knowledge for human benefit. To this day, many yoga positions are named after the creatures they were adapted from: the cobra, the tortoise,  the butterfly.