THE PRACTICE TO BE ONE (yo-ga)

I want to offer you something truly valuable and I want to offer it to you free for the taking. At least you will know of it, and then are free to do what you wish with it.

Most people experience yoga served on the buffet table of fitness methods Others learn of it seeking mental management or improvement in chronic conditions. Some seek its practices for deeper spiritual integration and resiliency in life.

Yoga is all of these and more.

Now I am going to give you one diamond key to health in return for your taking the time to read this blog.

"Yoga" translates as becoming one, joined to what creates well-being in all the details of living. To practice yoga and receive its benefits is to seek through daily practice to create and respect balance in all aspects of life and advance the health, oneness, and well-being of all. Health is impacted by community, connection, and choices. Recognition of the impact we each contribute to the survival and well-being of the whole is to join in the awareness that we all lose by the harm done to the whole. 2020 has made that very, very clear.

But this year is also an opportunity to reset, rethink, and reclaim the health we have been destroying. This year has hit us hard on many levels so that we will be required to wake up and reassess what we have been doing and what that doing has been doing and course-correct. This year has necessitated isolation so that we keenly feel how vital, necessary, and impactful we all are to each other which we have been neglecting. Chaos, crisis, and sickness occur simultaneously when what we let in or force out is imbalanced. Starting from the basic choices of what we eat and drink, breathe in and express out, to what we protect and share of power, opportunity, justice, ecology, health, and awareness. It all matters.

There are two parts, or arts, to classical yoga that train and discipline the muscles of sensitive awareness, balanced actions, ethical choices, and willpower. Developing these strengths will empower our lives with genuine and positive effects, will clearly direct our actions to align with that which we seek and dream, and bestow upon us self-control over our harmful impulses, attitudes, thoughts, words, and actions. They are called the restraints and observances for becoming wholly healthy. Take them as you wish, but know them at least.

The first daily restraint to practice is this:

Exercise AHIMSA. Restrain from causing harm to self or others.

WEARING A MASK IS PRACTICING YOGA in today's world.

We shall overcome when we all come together and be one in this practice that saves life.