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What is Yoga and how does it work? |
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Interview with Swami Vivekananda Saraswati
(by Vidya Films, www.throughtheeasterngate.com, January 2005)
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VF: |
What is yoga? |
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SVS: |
Yoga is a wonderful system of personal development, conceived thousands of years ago by the wise of India and partly of Tibet. It is a wonderful system because it is very pragmatic, very realistic. It is rooted in the observation of nature and of the human being and it deals with things as diverse as health, well-being, control over one’s emotions and mind. At the ultimate levels of practice it addresses the spiritual essence of the human being and is concerned with leading the practitioner to spiritual emancipation and realization. |
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VF: |
What are the basic principles of yoga? |
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SVS: |
Over the past couple of thousand years yoga has undergone several revolutions of upgrading of updating. The modern yoga is based almost entirely on the study of energy, and because of this the laws which govern modern yoga are the laws which govern energy. Energy is made of vibrations which obey certain fundamental laws. By studying and applying these same laws to the yoga practice we get a clear understanding of the underlying mechanics of yoga. Two of these laws are the law of correspondence and the law of resonance. The former postulates a correlation between energies in the human being and energies in the universe, the latter refers to a skilful way of attuning to a certain source of energy that is outside the human being. That all sounds very general and very big, but rest assured it all can be understood through proper practice. When you practice it becomes obvious how these things work. |
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VF: |
Can you explain how prana is being used in yoga? |
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SVS: |
It is a little bit like in Star Wars, when master Yoda explains to young Skywalker that the ‘force’ flows from the trees and the earth, and links everything with everything. We in yoga believe and experimentally feel that we live in an ocean of energy, in an ocean of force, in an ocean of prana. There is prana oozing from the earth, there is prana coming from the stratosphere and the cosmos, there is prana linking us to our environments and to nature. This same mysterious energy flows through the human body. It flows without us being aware of it, exactly like most people would not even be aware of their physical organs prior to studying anatomy and actually learning that they have a liver and a pancreas. In a similar way, we are ordinarily not aware of the flow of this energy through our bodies. However, through the practice of traditional yoga we can become aware of this prana, we can learn control it and we can learn to use it deliberately to bring about change, healing, harmonizing, balancing, and personal and spiritual development.
Prana is the mind-body connection and until recent times it was the missing link in western philosophy and systems of thought. For most of recorded history, the western philosophers have thought of the body as being an inanimate, unconscious, material piece of flesh, and of the mind as being some conscious ethereal reality, completely independent of the body. It is only by adding prana to the equation that you get a coherent and accurate picture of the human being. The body and the mind are united through this layer of vital force, which really is the key to both the body and the mind. |
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VF: |
What is a chakra and how does it relate to prana? |
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SVS: |
Prana is circulating through some precise channels in the human being. Those channels sometimes meet in nodal points, similar to an intersection where several roads come together. The major nodal points are called chakras in the yoga tradition. So a chakra is nothing else but the key point in the human energy structure. It is important to stress and understand that the chakras are not of a physical nature, they are not to be found in our physical bodies. A chakra is an energy structure, to be found in our pranic bodies, outside the physical body. By working with these subtle centres of force the yoga practitioner however does influence his physical body. To give an example: The glands in our bodies are governed and controlled by the chakras. So by practicing yoga properly, that means with a mental focus throughout the practice, we influence the glands, and in doing so we affect the hormonal balance in our bodies. By working with energy and the chakras we are therefore able to influence and control bodily functions such as digestion, blood circulation, breathing, and many others. Besides the many very beneficial physical effects, yoga also allows the practitioner to bring about changes in his/her emotional structure. By working with energy and chakras you can very efficiently and elegantly deal with any negative emotion you might be prone to experience, be it anger, jealously, depression, you name it… At an even deeper level yoga will also impact and change the mind and mental patterns. In the light of what I just said it becomes clear that yoga truly is a multidimensional practice that has a lot to offer to the human being, from healing and well-being to more lofty, subtle, and spiritual accomplishments. |
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VF: |
How do you feel about the many modern forms of yoga that are so popular these days? |
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SV: |
Most of these modern so-called “yogas” are not traditional forms of yoga. They usually bear the name of a contemporary person who has come up with a certain way or style of doing the yogic body postures, but in coming up with his/her own creation oftentimes forgot about the fundamental principles we talked about earlier. These creations are then labelled, typically with the name of the “inventor,” as is the case with Bikram or Iyengar. Personally I don’t respect and value these trends. I am of the opinion that most of these modern “yogas” are diluted to an extent that they barely deserve to be called yoga. The practice has been degraded to a mere physical workout, which by definition will never give you the possible results I mentioned before. The fact that yoga today more often than not is relegated to a fitness and stretching method is not necessarily wrong, but without telling the whole truth it becomes a painful limitation to what yoga truly is. |
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VF: |
Thank you very much! |
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