The True Meaning of Yoga

Lifestyle meditation teacher Mandy Trapp shares with us the true meaning of yoga. Yoga means to yoke together, or to bring together, into union all the dimensions of who we are. The soulful aspect of ourselves is the one that is just watching it all happen. And it is the same one that has been watching since the moment we took the first breath in our life, and it will be the same one that watches as we take the last breath in our life. And in that last breath in our life, we may feel the greatest sense of yoga or union. Patanjali wrote that the practice of yoga is available to us throughout our entire life if we go through the process. The outermost expression of who we are in yoga or in union is who we are in relationship to each other. The next layer is how we relate to ourselves---our inner dialogue. The third layer is known as asana---the seat and position that we sit in all areas in our lives. It is the many hats we wear, and all the rules that surround those roles. To get there, to reconnect with ourselves, we need to practice closing our eyes and withdrawing our senses and to practice the cessation of comparing. Yoga is learning who we are in those quieter places and then showing up just like that as we plug back into the world.