YOGIC LIFE ( take your yoga of the mat into your life for more balance and clarity in everything from relationships and parenting to your home and garden)
Swami Satchidananda on yogic lifestyle:
“When you do something, do it with one hundred percent of the mind. Don’t do it halfway. Whatever you do, do it with full concentration. That is Yoga.
It’s not that you are just going into a corner, sitting with the spine erect and then doing some japa or some breathing and that is Yoga. My Yoga is everything. All that you do is Yoga. When you start doing something, do only that — one hundred percent that. ‘Yogaha karmasu kaushalam,’ the Bhagavad Gita says. That means perfection in your every action is Yoga.”
Yogic Lifestyle in the Modern World
Yogic lifestyle is a life of balance between “cleaning the mirror” and “spreading the Light”.
Yogic Lifestyle Personified
Once a young man wanted to know the meaning of life. He searched high and low; he took courses and workshops, but still he could not quite grasp it.
One day, he went to hear a Master speak. At the end of the lecture, the young man raised his hand and asked: “Could you please explain the meaning of life?”
The audience chuckled at the eternal question and started to get up to leave. The Master replied: “That’s a very good question. I have the answer right here in my bag.” He took out a small mirror, captured a ray of light with it, and directed the light to the young man’s face.
Can you all see how I am catching the light and directing it to his face?” he asked. “Yes.” “The meaning of life,” the Master explained, “is to gather Light and to take it where it’s needed the most. Your purpose is to capture some Light and take it to some dark place in the world.” Yogic Lifestyle is about two actions: “cleaning the mirror” and “spreading the Light”.
The mirror is the mind and body. They have to be clean and pure to catch the light in the first place. Yogic lifestyle is therefore about purifying the mind and keeping the body healthy.
Yogic lifestyle includes certain principles and values, some of which refer to the 5 rules of social conduct, the YAMAS:
- AHIMSA = non-violence
- SATYA = truthfulness
- ASTEYA = non-stealing
- BRAHMACHARYA = faithfulness
- APARIGRAHA = non-greed
