Bliss is another name for Yoga

Twisting body into pretzel-like poses is simply that. It is not yoga.

People often think that yoga is all about physical exercise and breath control. They can be concluding this from the poses that a Yogi, practitioner of Yoga, maintains. The expertise with which a yogi performs and maintains the positions appears to them as yet another kind of kind of physical activity.

But this is the last thing Yoga was meant to be! It is a far cry from what yoga is all about. Yoga has many deeper levels. At every level, a marvelous and almost miraculous blending of the mind and the body takes place.

Let us watch our mind at work. It does not move in a linear progression. The thoughts are not connected to each other logically or sequentially. Thoughts jump from one idea to the next. One thought keeps us in the present, while the successive thought can be in future.

In an advanced yoga practitioner, the mind and the body are in balance and harmony. The regular practice of yoga leads us from the body into our mind. Intense practice of yoga leads us beyond the mind. It will lead us beyond the body and mind into a sate of our spirit where we become aware of the truth of our Existence.

Yoga, a Sanskrit word, is understood to mean Union. This union refers to the melting of human self with the divine or the Cosmic Power.

Truly speaking, Yoga does not mean Union, it means Uniting. Yoga is the process of Uniting, not the end result of Union.

The process of Uniting helps transcend one’s identification with the mind body system. A Yogi transcends the body and mind identification through a process of meditation, into a true awareness of his spiritual identity. His mind and body are perfectly in-tune with the vibrations and energies of the cosmos.

This awareness brings another welcome side effect—bliss! We now walk the path of bliss or Ananda while doing our Yoga. The ever blissful union of the cosmic energy with a human mind is Ananda Yoga.

The bliss that results from practice of Yoga is not a goal or end result that is aimed at. It is an experience of just walking the path of Yoga. When the path is right, the Yogi says, the destination you reach is always right, it is always blissful.

This is what we teach in our Nithya Yoga programs.