The complex five-thousand-year-old tradition of yoga is about a very simple thing: Happiness (Ananda). Yoga tells us that in order to realize lasting happiness, we must discover our true, spiritual nature. This requires that we commit ourselves to nothing less than self-transformation and self-transcendence. For although our true nature, or spiritual self, is always the same, it tends to be obscured by our conventional thoughts, emotions, and patterns of behaviour. The yoga tradition compares this circumstance to the brightly shining sun, which is ever radiant but periodically hidden from our view by drifting dark clouds.
Yoga helps us to remove all obstructing (mental) clouds, so that we may come to enjoy the sunshine within. It is an extensive program of re-education through which we learn, step by step, to live in the light of our true nature. Only when we have truly found ourselves will we be able to live in peace, harmony, and happiness in the world. This is what is sometimes called the sacred life.
For many people, practicing yoga means to do yoga postures once or twice a week, or even everyday. Although this approach can yield many benefits, such as better health and greater vitality, the real power of yoga is unleashed only when we engage yoga as a way of life, twenty-four hours a day. Yoga is universal and applicable in all situations. It is first and foremost a mental, or inner discipline. Even its physical postures (asana) have a spiritual purpose and must be practiced with full awareness. Every single yoga technique – from postures to cleansing practices to meditation – is a tool for discovering the abiding happiness of the ultimate Self, or Spirit.
From “Living your Yoga – Finfing the spiritual in everyday life” By Judith Lasater – Preface by Georg Feuerstein Ph.D, Founder-director of the Yoga Research and Education centre, Oakland California.