She Is Also Doing Outdoor Yoga
She Is Also Doing Outdoor Yoga
The world of yoga is vast and includes various practices including serving plants and animals.
Here is one of our yoginis doing bhuta yajina (service to plants and animals) – one of the innumerable aspects of the diverse and grand approach of yogic philosophy and life principles.
Annie writes us:
Don’t know exactly what asana this is, but it was very close to nirvana – spent the day banding osprey chicks with Karen McDonald and a bunch of SERC volunteers!
Although Annie was joking about “which asana [posture] this is”, her point is well-taken. Most think that yoga is just about bending or twisting the physical body – nothing more. But yoga is so much more than that, which is why Annie was well justified in sending us this photo for this month’s Outdoor Yoga challenge.
To think that yoga merely means doing a physical posture (asana) is to cut the heart and soul out of yoga. Yet nowadays, people often categorize yoga as just being a physical exercise. They do not even think that meditation (sadhana) is part of yoga. And to be fair, this is no fault of their own. That is what the modern day yoga industry preaches and teaches on the day-to-day, practical level.
However, yoga is a way of life wherein the physical postures play a meaningful but very small role. Of Patanjali’s 8-fold system of astaunga yoga, the first two limbs are the yogic code of morality, the third limb is the physical posture or asana, and the remaining five limbs are all meditation based practices. So the “asana” is one limb, or 12.5% of yoga. And actually, the asana is even less than that because there are many aspects of yoga beyond the 8-limbs outlined by Maharishi Patanjali.
So while we may not know all there is to know about yoga, at the very least we should not limit it to the physical posture. We should remember that the vast world of yoga includes meditation (dharana, pranayama, dhyana & more), diet, service (to humans, plants, and animals), fasting, bathing practices, social philosophy, spiritual philosophy, epistemology, health sciences, Sanskrit, intuitional science, art, music (kiirtan, bhajans), dance, poetry, morality, justice & the fight against exploitation, economics, history, and so much more.
Here the point is that yoga is vast. And by not limiting it to the mere physical posture, we open ourselves up to so much more of what yoga has to offer. Thanks for the reminder Annie!!