Hello everyone and welcome.
My name is Melissa and I'm going to be guiding you through an introduction to the yoga sutras of pentanjali.
Now a little bit about my background.
I started practicing yoga around 15 years ago and I started yoga as a physical practice for exercise and just to increase my strength and flexibility.
But as I started practicing for a while I realized that there was a part of yoga that I was missing in a western yoga class.
So I decided to enroll in a yoga teacher training to broaden my knowledge of yoga.
And when I did my first 200 hour training I realized even then very little was touched upon when it came to the philosophy of yoga.
The initial training was mostly about how to teach postures and the different kinds of postures and anatomy which are all important but most of it was just the physical asana practice and not too much on the philosophy behind yoga.
So as I finished that training I ended up going on for my further training in my 500 hours of yoga.
And today I am an ERYT 500 which means I've taught over 4,
000 hours of yoga with 500 hours of training.
And even still I feel like there's so much more to yoga than what is taught in American schools that I found an interest in myself just learning on my own on yoga Sanskrit and the sutras and where yoga originated from and the roots of yoga.
Because I believe that yoga should be practiced as a whole in order for it to work as opposed to just practicing the asana aspect of yoga.
So I've decided to come up with this series in order to deepen your knowledge of yoga and the philosophy and history behind the yoga sutras just so you might want a better understanding of what yoga is all about.
And as we go through this series and the sutras I will be sharing just my aspect and my interpretation of the sutras as I teach it to my students.
So let's look at the yoga sutras of Pentangeli.
So we got to realize that yoga is a path and every student is on a different journey.
So these yoga sutras are written in a way to connect with students on their path because everybody is different coming to the yoga mat.
So we come to yoga with different physical abilities and then oftentimes because of those physical classes a lot of students get discouraged to continue their practice because they feel like they're unable to execute those asana postures or postures on the mat.
So they end up quitting because they feel that they are not capable of practicing yoga.
So we have to bring yoga to students where they are at on their journey and reaffirm to them that yoga is a path and it's individual path for just one person.
It's not the same practice for everyone.
So the yoga sutras are a guide of how to practice yoga and we all have our different aspects that we bring to yoga and different things that we come to in our lives to either struggle with or overcome.
And yoga teaches us how to create peace in the mind when we're going through life.
So Pentangeli wrote these sutras and Pentangeli is a sage from India and the sutras date back around approximately 2000 years ago in India and it's very short,
Very sweet.
There's I think I've read somewhere that the sutras themselves are only written down on 10 sheets of paper.
So it's very short verses and so what sutra means in English it means threads of wisdom.
So Pentangeli wrote these threads of wisdom in a way to enlighten people,
To help people find peace,
Find bliss,
Find joy in physical experience,
In reality,
No matter what is happening,
No what what kind of adversity is happening in life that we alleviate suffering in the mind,
Caused by the mind because most suffering is caused by what we are thinking.
So these sutras are a way of practicing yoga in order to enlighten ourselves to release suffering while we are going on our path.
So as I said they are very short verses,
Very sweet.
There's only 196 verses broken down into into four books.
So as we go through this series I will go over each sutra one by one and just have a little discussion each week on what my feelings and thoughts are and you're always welcome to make your comments of what you what meaning you find behind it for yourself.
So so the four books are broken down in a way as the first book is describing the philosophy behind yoga and why yoga should be practiced and the second book has to do with how yoga is practiced.
So that's where the eight limbs of yoga or what Pentangeli called ashtanga yoga which means eight limb path of yoga and breaking down those limbs and how yoga should be practiced through those eight limbs.
And then the third book goes over what we gain by practicing yoga.
What kind of powers in a way but not like powers like a superhero more like mental powers that we gain control over this mind that we are conscious beings and we are not the thoughts we are not the body and once we ascend above that ego self we attain enlightenment we attain samadhi which is also called bliss and we attain peace no matter what is happening with us in any moment in time.
And then the fourth book just goes a little bit further into connecting our higher self to this physical reality because we are physical beings having we're conscious beings I should say having a physical experience so it's broken down in a way how do we live this way how do we live in as conscious beings in a physical experience and what should we be experiencing while we're here.
So going through all these sutras a little bit one by one we'll go ahead and explore each week how the sutras can benefit us and what we can find in today's modern society in modern world how can we apply it to our lives on and off the mat so thank you for joining me for this talk and then next week we'll start looking into the verses and the sutras and find the meaning behind all those wonderful things that sutras bring to us to bring peace and until then I will see you guys soon.
Namaste.
