Yoga.
A word that has as much versatility as the word love or God. A word diverse yet held with reverence by most. Some live for it, others do it with gritted teeth. Whatever their view, it remains that the yoga industry is estimated to be worth $107.1 billion in 2023 and could reach $116.57 billion in 2024 worldwide. With those type of numbers behind yoga, it is safe to say that yoga has the world's attention and is it not fading away as a fad. I contribute this to yoga being the medicine that it is. The true essence of yoga is never hidden for long.
Many begin yoga as a means to add a stretching routine after their weight training or running, etc.. Yoga is much more than mere stretching. Yoga has centuries of philosophy and ancient wisdom that has surrounded it's culture. By exploring the spiritual aspects of yoga beyond the physical postures, we are able to deepen our understanding of the mind-body connection.
The main definition would be "to yoke (to join) the body and mind together."
To understand what that means, we must look at what it means to pay attention to the mind, and then to pay attention to the body. Many of us begin with only paying attention to the body. That is how I began, that is how many others begin.
I found yoga while looking for methods of improved health and fitness. I believed yoga would help with flexibility and prevent injuries. Soon enough, I noticed there was more to it.
I would leave a yoga session with the same amount in my bank account and the same issues with my life, but somehow my mindset had been restructured by the practice. The obstacle to my well being seemed less like obstacles and more like innocuous buoys bobbing along the surface of my existence.
How was this possible? How did a handful of Sun Salutations and few Pigeon poses completely shift my frame of mind?
Yoga helps evenly distribute the traffic on our meridian highways. Traffic is energy. The traffic is our thoughts. The traffic is our emotions.
We are affecting the energetic channels of our systems whether we know it or not.
As Diane Connelly says in Sarah Powers book, “It is only by chi that the planets move , the sun shines, and human beings live and breathe. It is spoken with reverence because it is the basis of life and when gone awry, the basis of disease.” Most of us talk about energy in our everyday lives. We know when we have it and we know there are times we don’t have it. We understand this feeling.
The 12 major meridians are composed of:
5 Yin meridians: Heart, Spleen, Lungs, Kidneys, Liver
5 Yang meridians: Small intestines, Stomach, Large intestine, Urinary bladder, Gallbladder
Pericardium meridian
San Jiao meridian
Everything in life requires the association of Yin and Yang for balance, which is why the organ meridians form pairs. For example, Stomach (Yang) forms a pair with Spleen (Yin).
Yin organs are solid and their main function is to store our energies and fluids, while Yang organs are hollow and their main function is to transform and transmit energies and fluids.
Each organ pair’s has specific functions in our body and is linked to a particular element and different emotions. Emotional imbalance can be a sign of unbalanced Qi.
Through practicing yoga, we are consistently re-organizing the energy flow which in turn affects our internal workings--figuratively and non-figuratively.
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