Soul Sustenance

Yoga - A Lifestyle (Part 2) 

All of us are living beings with a mind and an intellect, which we use to connect to various objects, people and events throughout the day. This is called our mental energy. This mental energy travels extremely fast and can reach another person in much less than a second. Very often we focus our mental energy on the physical body for mental peace and physical fitness through the medium of yog asanas or yogic postures to attain the desired purpose. That for us is a way of letting go of our stresses and negative energies stored in the body. It makes our mind and body healthy. We also focus our mental energies on our breath through the medium of pranayama whereby flawless and smooth breathing is experienced. This benefits our physical body immensely and also gives us mental energy. 

If you are new at the Brahma Kumaris, and if you are practicing yog asanas and pranayama for their physical and emotional health benefits, from before, you don’t need to stop them. This is because both these are extremely important mediums for this purpose and widely acclaimed and proven successful techniques which have saved many people from the most serious of illnesses. They have also reduced the intensity of many illnesses. There are lakhs of people all over the world who share their experiences confirming this. But the Brahma Kumaris add another dimension to this physical side of yoga – a spiritual yoga i.e. connecting the mind and intellect to the supreme source of spiritual energy or God. This is also called yoga or connection with a non-physical pure entity - God. So those who have been practicing yog asanas and pranayama, if they desire, can continue to do the same but add the spiritual yoga in their lifestyles. Those who have not been practicing yog asanas and pranayama concentrate only on the spiritual yoga. Spiritual yoga not only purifies the soul but also has immense benefits for the physical systems of the body and helps in purifying them. This is because a pure mind means a mind full of the seven qualities of peace, joy, love, bliss, purity, power and knowledge. That in turn influences the main systems of the body and makes them free of illnesses. The mechanism of how the mind affects the different body systems will be explained in tomorrow’s message, in further detail.