Yoga: Spiritual Benefits of Yoga

By Times of India

 
Practising yoga regularly imparts great benefits, which are:
 
 Basic spiritual benefits
 Improved Concentration
 Regulated Breath
 Clarity in Mind
 
 Thought Control (Clear and one-pointed thought)
 Mind Control (Firm Will power)
 Psychic control (like telepathy, clairvoyance etc.)
 
 Ultimate spiritual benefit - The realisation that you and every other being in the universe are one! So you  = me and me = you .
 Healing of the body, psyche and soul is one of the basic directions in the yogic activity and serves the whole psychobiological and spiritual restoration. Purifying, healing and rejuvenating yogic exercises can restore health, life force, joy and also lengthen the life span. Laya Yoga practices serve liberation, salvation of the soul and its reconciliation with God.
 
 Discover your breath - A major and important benefit you may notice with yoga practice is that you are more in touch with your breathing.
 Yoga poses are practiced in harmony with the breath. One of the residues of this constant concentration on breath is that students tend to pay more attention to their breath outside of class. Most students report they are surprised to learn that they find themselves holding their breath frequently during the day in response to stress. By learning to notice their breath holding they can begin to break the habit. When one breathes easily throughout the day, less tension will accumulate in the body.
 
 Free your thoughts - One of the most important things you can learn from a yoga class is that your thoughts have the ability to affect your overall contentment and health. During the deep relaxation pose ( savasana ), one systematically relaxes every part of the body, even suggesting that the brain itself is relaxed. During conscious relaxation, thoughts are experienced more as energy, which is associated with the brain than as the sum total of who we are.
 We have thoughts, but those thoughts no longer take over our bodies and minds at large - triggering tension, anxiety or other responses. Yoga teaches us that consciousness and thoughts are not the same thing.
 
 During relaxation we are able to let the thoughts flow through us without dancing away with them to the past or the future. We remain conscious, allowing the thoughts to come through us, but we learn not to interact with them. We can say to ourselves, -Oh, theres another thought of dinner, or of person X or of fear about tomorrows meeting.-Then we can let go of that thought and return to the relaxation at hand. This is a meditative practice, which gradually over time allows us to dis-identify with our thoughts.
 
 When thoughts are experienced just as thoughts, not as reality itself, then the path to freedom which yoga promises begins to unfold naturally. And that path is as sweet as a perfectly ripe mango.