Some Westerners see the practice of Yoga as a form of relaxing meditation and gentle body stretching. Those in India, or who have studied Classical Yoga, know that the physical exercise plays a very small role in Yoga.
Yoga is a path with a very clear destination in mind - Brahman or god. At the heart of Yoga is the meaning of the word - the uniting of the whole person on every level. The only way to achieve Brahman is to make the person whole again, instead of remaining a fragmented, separate or split entity.
Essentially, there is no difference between the whole person and Brahman. God is not separate to who we are, but rather we are god. Understanding and accepting this means to shatter the illusion we have been taught and remove the veil that keeps us blind to the ultimate truth.
In the West, life can be seen as a dynamic interplay between force and control, with all of its materialistic spoils. While in the East, life is seen as the softer, gentler counterpart, where ‘going with the flow’ is preferred. Nowadays, these roles seem to have been reversed as the East becomes more like the West and the West endears itself more to the East.
For Yoga, the Western drive to control and force is a foreign notion, especially when the ultimate goal is to become our deepest Self, something that can only be achieved by going within and learning to control our senses, desires, thoughts, and emotions, etc., and not the world around us.
This understanding and wisdom is something that both Yoga and the Essenz share - the surrender and sacrifice of the individual ego and the acceptance of I AM. The separation of the self from the whole is revealed as the ultimate illusion, and the oneness with life the ultimate truth.
In the case of Yoga, this is an eight-limbed path, with eight stages for anyone to raise their consciousness from the basal ego state to the highest state of Brahman. Once all aspects of the self are aligned and whole, the practitioner reaches the most blissful state of I AM. Nothing else to do, except accept that we are nothing and within that nothing is everything.
Yoga’s eight limbed path consists of levels that help the practitioner prepare for each stage. They are lessons in discipline that start on the outside and move inwards. Yoga asanas, or the physical exercises that we have come to know in the West, are the third external level on the eight limbed path. After the Asanas, come Pranayama (stillness through breath), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), and Samadhi - the ‘union with the true Self’.