What Is Yoga? Union and Awareness in Everyday Life

What does yoga mean? Umesh Guruji goes back to the word itself and finds a joining: of body and mind, of mind and a higher mind, and of that higher mind with the soul. For him the postures are one doorway, but yoga is a way of living, made of awareness in every moment.

What does the word yoga mean?

Umesh Guruji explains that yoga means "joint", a union: body with mind, mind with "supermind", supermind with soul. Today yoga is famous only for its postures, the asanas. They help, he says, if you breathe deeply, feel every movement and watch yourself. But "yoga is the life", and the posture is only one way into it. The idea is old: before Patanjali, Hatha and Ashtanga yoga, he traces it to Sankhya yoga and the Vedas.

Yoga in everyday life

For Umesh, any action done with awareness becomes yoga: walking and knowing that you walk, drinking water and feeling it, eating with attention instead of in front of the television. Awareness also turns inward, to anger and negative thoughts. In pranayama, the practice of conscious breathing, he describes a deep silence in which tension falls away. And when you are connected with your body, he says, you have more prana, the energy of life.

Connecting with yourself

The real problem, Umesh says, is only one: "you are not connected with yourself". We look outside and never inside. He calls the body a beautiful temple and invites us to see the beauty of our own mind and feelings. The more connected you are, the more awake you become. The same presence is at the heart of the lesson on meditation.