We love to get to the yoga studio and sweat—afterwards we feel loose and energized. If we keep it up, we lose weight and feel lighter and stronger, more energy to meet the challenges of every day. But most of us wouldn’t think of our yoga as something we use to address the bigger goals and challenges of our life: We don’t see Sun Salutations as something we do to fix problems in our relationship, or to get our credit card balances down.
In the old days though—in ancient India—yoga was meant to make our whole life successful. How yoga works this way is explained in cryptic lines from the mother of all yoga books: the Yoga Sutra, written almost 2,000 years ago by the Indian sage Patanjali. By taking some time to learn the deep but practical methods found in this ancient classic, we can learn to turn our yoga practice into something that radically changes not just our body, but every part of our life: relationships, finances, inner peace, peace in the world around us. We get both halves of yoga.
You must use kindness,
compassion, joy, and equanimity…
This practice makes the mind
bright and clear as pure water.
