by Alwin Templar

Created on: June 12, 2009

It's probably true to say that the majority of people in the West who practice yoga only do so in order to improve themselves physically. And that's fine. Yoga postures and breathing exercises, if practiced carefully and methodically, can certainly transform our whole physical make-up and improve our physical health considerably. But if we limit our yoga by seeking only to explore its physical benefits, we blind ourselves to a whole panorama of possibilities. Yoga is not just something we do. Yoga is everything we do.

The ultimate goal of yoga is the union of individual consciousness with universal consciousness. Yogis accept that the former is an illusion and that the core reality behind each one of us is pure unlimited consciousness, a state beyond ego and its illusory sense of individuality. However, back in the era of Classical India and beyond, it was recognized that different types of people required different paths to reach the same destination.

That is why the newcomer to yoga is faced with (and often confused by) a plethora of yoga types: Jnana, Karma, Raja, Bhakti, etc. Each one was designed to suit a different type of person, such as the intellectual, the worker, the aesthete and the devotee. Yet it's precisely because there are several classical yogas available for us to study and practice that we can now exploit the benefits of each and thus integrate our individual characters and develop ourselves in the process.

* The physical benefits of yoga

We benefit physically from yoga in three ways: our bodies develop flexibility, poise and balance when we regularly practice yoga postures; our breathing patterns and lung capacity improve when we adopt yoga methods of breath control; and our ability to perform these first two is enhanced when we adopt various yoga purification practices. These latter include several ways of clearing the airways and caring for the digestive system.

There are many yoga postures available for us to practice, but students of yoga usually adopt a mix of five or six that, when performed daily, will be sufficient to stretch and tone all of the body's major muscles and joints. Over time, the careful use of yoga postures will transform our physique. We will become flexible as never before and our muscle tone and definition will become pronounced, taut and spare and excess body-fat will slowly fall away.

Yoga breathing practices allow us not only to adopt the habit of deep breathing - a healthy habit in itself - but also

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