There are so many different styles of yoga to choose from these days; finding the right one for you can be bewildering.
Our society is searching for new inspiration in old traditions, and yoga has become a trendy way to find that missing something in our busy lives. But while some of these newer styles satisfy the gym-hungry people who want to push harder, stretch further, and hold poses for long periods of time, the deeper meaning of yoga is being lost.
My Mum used to say, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.” For me, that means when it comes to yoga, it’s worth exploring ‘authentic’ yoga – yoga that is not just about the physical movements, but about the body, mind and spirit as a whole.
About 2,000 years ago, an Indian sage called Patanjali systemised the various yoga traditions that had been evolving in India for many centuries. It was a revolutionary move and allowed for the different paths of yoga to be integrated together. In his important book of yoga, he starts with the succinct words: “Yogachittabritta nirodaha.” Roughly translated that means yoga is to calm the unsettled mind.
So, if the purpose of yoga us to calm the mind, then doing callisthenics and calling it yoga is missing the point of yoga.
There are four main paths of yoga: Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, and Raja Yoga. Only the last path, Raja Yoga even touches on the idea of physical practices in yoga, proving that the physical movements are only a small part of true yogic practice. We have all seen the asanas – the poses people do in classes and on YouTube – but may not realise that the point of the asanas is to prepare the body to sit in stillness for meditation and contemplation. The following four paths are the true heart of yoga:
Karma Yoga is the yoga of selfless service; the yoga of dynamic meditation, or an action performed with meditative awareness. It’s doing work with complete awareness, but without attachment to the fruits or outcome of the work. Thus the work is the end in itself, not the means to attaining a reward or payment.
For example, when I lived in an ashram, one of my main jobs was cleaning windows, mirrors and shower screens. ‘Boring work’ you might say, but it allowed me to be helpful at the same time as I was able to spend hours in quiet contemplation.
Bhakti Yoga is the yoga of devotion. It is generally devotional to the supreme consciousness. As a sub-branch of Bhakti Yoga, there is Mantra Yoga, which is the chanting or repetition of sounds that have an effect on the mental and psychic consciousness of people. It’s a powerful way to approach meditational states, because the mind becomes calm while concentrating on the mantra.
Most people enjoy listening to music and singing. It generally makes us feel uplifted. Mantra Yoga works the same way; it helps to focus us and inspire us.
Jnana Yoga is the yoga of knowledge and wisdom. It’s not intellectual knowledge, but the wisdom we achieve when we explore ourselves, and our place in the universe. Jnana Yoga is also called the ‘yoga of self-inquiry.’ It is a very challenging path to follow, as it requires us to use the mind in order to tame, or subdue it. It is the most contemplative path of yoga.
Raj Yoga is the most systematic method of attaining states of meditation, because it maps out for us a way to reach our ultimate goal – enlightenment, bliss. Contained under the banner of Raj Yoga is Hatha Yoga, the most well-known style of yoga in the West. Hatha Yoga is primarily concerned with bodily practices which calm the mind and discipline the body. In Hatha Yoga, the physical practices – the asanas – serve to keep the ‘body temple’ in the best working order. In Raj Yoga, the asanas are performed to strengthen the body in preparation for long periods of sitting in meditation.
As I said at the beginning, I realised that if I wanted to do yoga, I had to do it authentically; this meant integrating all four paths into my yogic practice, and my life. Fortunately for me, the ashram in Mangrove Mountain teaches the Satyananda style of yoga, which incorporates all of these paths into its practice.
Each of the ‘paths’ of yoga may be likened to a strand in a length of rope. The rope is stronger when all the strands are woven together. For me, yoga is strengthened when all the paths, or strands, are woven together – when a yoga practice becomes more than just a form of exercise, but a way to calm the mind so we experience our world in new ways.