Integral Yoga represents a hatha, gentle practice of the yoga discipline. It has been developed by Sri Swami Sachidananda and it includes meditation, breathing exercises, kriyas and chanting. This type of yoga is being practiced since the 1960s when its founder first came from India to the US. The first yoga centers that he founded were in Buckingham, Virginia. However, the centers expanded in time and this kind of yoga started gaining more and more practitioners.
What is Integral Yoga?
Integral Yoga bears this name due to the fact that its practice integrates not only the body and the mind, but also the spirit. By practicing it, you can learn to live a joyful, peaceful and healthy life, but also a useful life that in turn could help others. All in all, the teachings on which this yoga practice is based exceed the physical level and inspire practitioners to find in themselves a fulfilled existence and to develop a way of living peacefully and in harmony with those surrounding them.
Integral Yoga principles
Integral Yoga has one basic principle that must be followed for a successful practice of this discipline. Its whole principle is to give yourself solely to the Divine. The offering of yourself must be wholly, complete. Therefore, you cannot also give yourself in spirit to anyone else. By establishing a sacred union to the Divine Mother, her power, transcendent light, truth-consciousness, purity, peace and wideness will be achieved by you, as well. In addition, the Ananda of the Sacred and Supramental divine will also flow into you.
Benefits of Integral Yoga
Internal Yoga does not separate spirituality and psychology from the body. Therefore, there are numerous benefits that its practice can bring. The most important though is represented by the solar energy that can be received by all practitioners as long as they do it right. The solar energy can upgrade people’s lives and can help them upgrade their existence.
Besides, the same type of yoga has the ability of increasing the stamina and endurance levels of the practitioners, help them maintain a proper focus as far as their lives are concerned, allow them to get rid of frustration, ignorance and anxiety and teach them how to contemplate the beautiful existence that they have.
Basic Integral Yoga poses
The most important pose of the Integral Yoga discipline is represented by the Sun Salutation one. This is in fact a smooth movement that in turn is made up of multiple positions. The great benefits of this pose are that it can improve your flexibility, body strength and balance. In order to do it, you have to stand in the well-known mountain position which is a very relaxed standing pose.
To continue, you have to make a very fluent motion in which to bend backwards a little bit while keeping your arms stretched and into the air. Then, you must curl forward in a slow motion until you are able to touch your toes with your hands. From here, you have to continue with lying flat with your face down. In order to reach this pose, you should first curl your head and then your buttocks. To complete the pose, you must get back into the initial position by doing another slow motion of standing up.
