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	# 2022-08-14 - Why Yoga?

	A friend recently gave me a copy of Meditations from the Mat by Rolf
	Gates and Katrina Kenison. The first chapter addresses why people
	might be drawn to Yoga and it seemed like a good fit for a log entry.

	> He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils: for
	> time is the greatest innovator. --Sir Francis Bacon

	As we move into the twenty-first century, yoga seems to be the West's
	new remedy. Yet this remedy is in fact over five thousand years
	old--far older than Islam, even older than Christianity. Today, in
	yoga studios throughout the West, Sanskrit, one of the oldest written
	languages, is used as contemporary classroom jargon. So we might
	ask, Why Yoga? And why now?

	I believe our hunger for yoga, and our eagerness to embrace yoga as a
	spiritual practice, are a testament to our growth and our desire for
	change. In the aftermath of the bloodbath that was the twentieth
	century, and in the presence of threats posed by more recent events,
	there is a pressing need for what Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman
	describes as a "cold revolution." We need a new paradigm, one that
	will replace our present attachment to imbalance. Yoga is the study
	of balance, and balance is the aim of all living creatures; it is our
	home.

	The flow of this book follows the course of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.
	Written between 500 and 200 B.C., the Sutras codified a spiritual
	path that was already many centuries old at the time the Sutras were
	actually written down. Patanjali provides 196 succinct lessons on
	the nature of the human condition, human potential, and how that
	potential can be realized. Comprehensive, systematic, and remarkably
	precise, the Yoga Sutras organize the essence of all spiritual
	practices into a basic plan for living. You will find nothing in
	this ancient text that contradicts the precepts of any religion.
	Instead you will find a step-by-step guide to right living, a guide
	that complements the goals of any spiritual tradition.

	A spiritual practice is one that brings us full circle--not to a new
	self, but, rather, back to the essence of our true selves. Yoga is
	the practice of celebrating what is. At the end of the hero's
	journey, he [or she] finds that he [or she] did not need to go
	anywhere, that all he [or she] sought was inside [her or] him all
	along. Dorothy having traveled across time and space to the land of
	Oz, and having struggled desperately to find her way back to Kansas,
	discovers that she could have gone home any time. In the end, she
	learns that her adventures have simply brought her to the point where
	she can believe this. It is the aim of all spiritual seeking to
	bring us home, home to the understanding that we already have
	everything we need.

	We are far from home, and weary from our travels. The sun is setting
	and there is no destination in sight. Yoga is a lamp lit in the
	window of our home, dimly glimpsed across the spiritual wilderness in
	which we wander. At a time when we could not feel further from our
	home, yoga reminds us that we are already there, that we need simply
	awaken from our dream of separation, our dream of imperfection.

	* * *

	Here is recent news from the American Academy of Neurology:

	> Leisure activities, such as reading a book, doing yoga and
	> spending time with family and friends, may help lower the risk of
	> dementia, according to a new meta-analysis.

	Yoga linked to lower risk of dementia

	tags: yoga

	# Tags

	yoga