Is asana practice a totally over-rated part of yoga?
Think yoga, and likely you’ll think of a person bending their body into a posture. You’ll imagine the cover of Yoga Journal and think, that’s yoga. Except it’s not. It’s one aspect of Yoga – Hatha Yoga, or physical yoga. Yoga has many paths one can walk, including Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Tantra Yoga, Mantra Yoga… some of these paths don’t involve twisting and turning of the body at all, yet they are still yoga. And to complicate things even more, when Patanjali wrote his 196 yoga sutras, laying out out to incorporate the science of yoga into your life, he specified eight separate aspects, of which asana is only one (and asana is only referred to once, in just two lines!). Patanjali’s eight limbs are kind of like the road map which all of these yoga paths follow: • Yamas – how you treat others and the world around you • Niyamas – how you treat yourself • Asana – physical postures • Pranayama – breathing exercises • Pratyahara – withdrawal of the senses. Pratyahar
