by Youngbear Roth

Created on: July 18, 2010   Last Updated: December 10, 2010

The purpose of Yoga meditation is to learn renunciation or liberating to the human condition of suffering 'en stasis'. In the East, the goal traditionally came first and the tool to achieve that goal was less important. When Yoga journeyed to the West we gradually reversed the spin on this traditional viewpoint – putting the tool, such as learning Hatha (physical) Yoga first - leaving many of us with an incomplete understanding of what Yoga meditation is and  its goal.

Yoga meditation is not "zoning out" – it is becoming intensely engaged in a fierce search for one's highest divine self. This self or "true face" as the Yoga school of 'Zazen' Buddhist Yoga meditation calls it, is constantly with us. However, becoming consciously aware of the self in an overbearing psychosocial life circumstance that demands we focus on fitting a mold such as is productive for the mundane life creates a snowstorm effect falsely reporting to us that the divine and the mundane are separate, when in fact, they are born one of the other, like two sides of a coin are one and the same coin, and cannot exist as one without the other.

The success of Yoga meditation in stress management, or long-term clinical depression, or any number of human pathologies and life issues is the tradition of Yoga meditation showing us that it is possible to learn techniques enabling us to bring forth the divine or spiritual aspect into the mundane, thereby becoming aware of one's whole self or true face.   

Living in 'maya' (incomplete knowledge of our whole self) is living outside of a true, whole, natural harmony as intended by creation; and living in disharmony creates suffering. This is key to the philosophy or viewpoint of Yoga meditation – the bonds of maya can be broken.    

Yoga meditation for liberating oneself from suffering is the oldest transpersonal approach to self-realization or enlightenment, and the broadest tradition in its variety of techniques for autonomy from the condition of maya.

How may we best practice Yoga meditation in today's world, and what practical daily changes can we expect in our lives?

Yoga, both physical and seated meditation styles affect the Limbic and Cerebellar systems of the human brain. The Limbic system is where we process our emotional and spiritual being through expressions of olfaction, emotion, motivation, behavior, and various autonomic functions and has a direct line to the frontal lobes where

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