Yoga is Relationships

by Atmananda

Our life is made up of relationships: healthy relationships, unhealthy relationships, functional, dysfunctional, loving, laboured, compassionate, complacent. Our lives are made up of so many different relationships. And our goals and our ambitions are so often based upon or dependent upon or aimed at establishing relationships, improving relationships.

Yoga, when it is practiced correctly, - and that’s the goal of atma-yoga, to practice it correctly - is all about relationships. Specifically yoga is about healing and rebuilding relationships. Atma-yoga brings the energy of rebuilding relationships to the forefront of our yoga-practice and ideally, hopefully in our daily lives.

In atma-yoga healing and renewing, sometimes releasing and often recapturing relationships is done by changing our state of mind, expanding our consciousness, by examining and exploring the way we perceive ourselves and ourselves in the world.When you come into an atma-yoga class, you’ll be told to become aware of weight and to pay attention to breath, because these things are the beginning of renewing relationships.

When you become aware of weight you become aware of your relationship to the earth, the Mother Earth, the Goddess Earth, the pure devotee, who selflessly offers herself for your support. As you become aware and conscious of that relationship with the Earth, as you become more appreciative, your relationship grows, heals. As you develop more awareness of Mother Earth’s qualities, your own qualities improve.

When you pay attention to breath, you begin a journey towards realizing that the magic in breath, which is the very essence of life called prana is actually none other than God. If you become aware that that is the very Divine, that is coming in and out of you, and as your awareness deepens, you realize that it’s actually not you, but this prana that is the doer, the activator, the bringer of life.

So as your awareness becomes less self-centered, and you become more appreciative, grateful, and conscious of the role of the Divine and prana in your life, your relationship with the Divine begins to change. You see yoga is all about relationships: rebuilding them, renewing them, recapturing them.