Wikipedia: Yoga
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga
Wikipedia: Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali
How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali
The Truth About Yoga
Yoga Day USA lists "Top 10 Reasons to Try Yoga for Life" on their website www.YogaDayUSA.org. "Unfortunately," states Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati, "Most of their reasons have little to do with authentic, traditional Yoga." Yoga Alliance is another resource at www.yogaalliance.org.
Below you will find the "Top 10 Reasons," followed by quotes from a number of Eastern thinkers. An audio clip posted by Swami Bharat weaves through both sections.
Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1147116912541&ref=nf
Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/nyregion/28yoga.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1
Rebel Yoga - Tara Stiles' Brand of Rebel Yoga Draws Claims of Heresy
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/nyregion/23stretch.html?src=twrhp
From Yoga Day USA: Top 10 Reasons to Try Yoga for Life
The health and fitness benefits of yoga have long been reported by practitioners and are now being confirmed by scientific research. Give yoga a try and discover what it can do for your body, your mind, and your soul.
1. Yoga for … Stress Relief: Yoga reduces the physical effects of stress on the body. By encouraging relaxation, yoga helps to lower the levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Related benefits include lowering blood pressure and heart rate, improving digestion and boosting the immune system as well as easing symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, asthma and insomnia.
2. Yoga for … Pain Relief: Yoga can ease pain. Studies have demonstrated that practicing yoga asanas (postures), meditation or a combination of the two, reduced pain for people with conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, auto-immune diseases and hypertension as well as arthritis, back and neck pain and other chronic conditions. Some practitioners report that even emotional pain can be eased through the practice of yoga.
3. Yoga for … Better Breathing: Yoga teaches people to take slower, deeper breaths. This helps to improve lung function, trigger the body’s relaxation response and increase the amount of oxygen available to the body.
4. Yoga for … Flexibility: Yoga helps to improve flexibility and mobility, increasing range of movement and reducing aches and pains. Many people can’t touch their toes during their first yoga class. Gradually they begin to use the correct muscles. Over time, the ligaments, tendons and muscles lengthen, increasing elasticity, making more poses possible. Yoga also helps to improve body alignment resulting in better posture and helping to relieve back, neck, joint and muscle problems.
5. Yoga for … Increased Strength: Yoga asanas (postures) use every muscle in the body, helping to increase strength literally from head to toe. And, while these postures strengthen the body, they also provide an additional benefit of helping to relieve muscular tension.
6. Yoga for … Weight Management: Yoga (even less vigorous styles) can aid weight control efforts by reducing the cortisol levels as well as by burning excess calories and reducing stress. Yoga also encourages healthy eating habits and provides a heightened sense of well being and self esteem.
7. Yoga for … Improved Circulation: Yoga helps to improve circulation and, as a result of various poses, more efficiently moves oxygenated blood to the body’s cells.
8. Yoga for … Cardiovascular Conditioning: Even gentle yoga practice can provide cardio-vascular benefits by lowering resting heart rate, increasing endurance and improving oxygen uptake during exercise.
9. Yoga for … Focus on the Present: Yoga helps us to focus on the present, to become more aware and to help create mind body health. It opens the way to improved concentration, coordination, reaction time and memory.
10. Yoga for … Inner Peace: The meditative aspects of yoga help many to reach a deeper, more spiritual and more satisfying place in their lives. Many who begin to practice for other reasons have reported this to be a key reason that yoga has become an essential part of their daily lives.
The Truth About Yoga According to Eastern Thinkers
Most people in the West, and also many in India, confuse Yoga with Hatha Yoga, the system of bodily postures. But Yoga is primarily a spiritual discipline.
(Paramahansa Yogananda)
Yoga has become the health and fitness system of choice. This is odd because it is the mind - not the body - that is the main target of all genuine Yoga practices .... To regard Yoga primarily as a set of practices for increasing strength and flexibility while calming the nervous system is to mistake the husk for the kernel.
(Pandit Rajmani Tigunait)
Like many arts and sciences that are profound, beautiful, and powerful, yoga has suffered from the spiritual poverty of the modern world--it has been trivialized, watered down, or reduced to cliches. The deep and eternal essence of yoga has been misrepresented and packaged for personal profit by clever people.
(Bhole Prabhu)
In ancient times hatha Yoga was practiced for many years as a preparation for higher states of consciousness. Now however, the real purpose of this great science is being altogether forgotten. The hatha Yoga practices which were designed by the rishis and sages of old, for the evolution of mankind, are now being understood and utilized in a very limited sense.
(Swami Satyananda Saraswati)
Yoga is not mere acrobatics . Some people suppose that Yoga is primarily concerned with the manipulation of the body into various queer positions, standing on the head, for instance, or twisting about the spine, or assuming any of the numerous odd poses which are demonstrated in the text-books on Yoga. These techniques are correctly employed in one distinct type of Yoga practice, but they do not form an integral part of the most essential type. Physical posture serve at best as an auxiliary, or a minor form of Yoga.
(Swami Chidananda Saraswati)
Many false and incomplete teachings have been propagated in its name, it has been subject to commercial exploitation, and one small aspect of Yoga is often taken to be all of Yoga. For instance, many people in the West think it is a physical and beauty cult, while others think it is a religion. All of this has obscured the real meaning of Yoga.
(Swami Rama)
Through the discipline of Yoga, both actions and intelligence go beyond these qualities [gunas] and the seer comes to experience his own soul with crystal clarity, free from the relative attributes of nature and actions. This state of purity is samadhi. Yoga is thus both the means and the goal. Yoga is samadhi and samadhi is Yoga.
(B. K. S. Iyengar)
The main objective of hatha Yoga is to create an absolute balance of the interacting activities and processes of the physical body, mind and energy. When this balance is created, the impulses generated give a call of awakening to the central force (sushumna nadi) which is responsible for the evolution of human consciousness. If Hatha Yoga is not used for this purpose, its true objective is lost.
(Swami Satyananda Saraswati)
The goal of Yoga is Yoga itself, union itself, of the little self and the True Self, a process of awakening to the preexisting union that is called Yoga. Yoga has to do with the realization through direct experience of the preexisting union between Atman and Brahman, Jivatman and Paramatman, and Shiva and Shakti, or the realization of Purusha standing alone as separate from Prakriti.
(Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati)
You use the body as a medium to bring the mind back to the brain. Perfect marriage between body and mind. Then, you can reach and knock the door to the spirit ... Yoga is free. It belongs to the earth. It's a god.