/>Nithya Yoga
The Deeper Truths
'The Mind Creates the Body'.
In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali said, ‘Our mind is responsible for absolutely everything. The way we look at the world, the way we perceive the world and the way we understand the world. The way we react or respond to the world is dependent on our mind’. Patanjali went even one step deeper and stated, ‘Your mind is responsible for creating your body’.
When Nithyananda was taught Nithya Yoga by Raghupati Yogi during his young age, he was given this very understanding and experience by the wise yogi. Raghupati Yogi helped him to understand this ancient truth experientially. Nithyananda used to be instructed by Raghupati Yogi to meditate on peace and bliss. Then Raghupati Yogi would ask him to make his body active with this experience of peace and bliss by running around the 25 acre perimeter of the temple.
At first, Nithyananda could not understand why Raghupati Yogi asked him to do such a contradictory practice; meditating on peace and bliss and then running wildy around the temple!
When Nithyananda asked Raghupati Yogi for an explanation, he was told, ‘With whatever reason, intention or purpose you move your body or make your body active, that intention, that purpose gets recorded deeply into your muscle memory. It becomes your very nature and expression’.
For example, when you think of an angry, irritable or stressed out individual, how do you visualise their body? It would be tight, constricted, tense and rigid.
When you think of a relaxed and peaceful person, how do you visualize their body? It would be graceful, free flowing, unconstricted and relaxed.
Therefore, if we want to change our body, we have to change our mind first. No amount of exotic yoga postures practiced on the yoga mat are going to bring long lasting change and allow yoga to happen in us if we don’t address the mind first.
'I am not here to add more movements to your life. I am here to add life to your movements'.
The word ‘yoga’ is literally translated as ‘union; union of the body, mind and spirit’. However Paramahamsa Nithyananda says, ‘Yoga does not actually mean ‘union.’ It means ‘uniting.’ The word union signifies that something has ended. But yoga, uniting is the intense process constantly happening in your Being’.
The Nithya Yoga practice is designed to give you the awareness, understanding and experience that every moment in your life can become and essentially is yoga. Yoga does not mean a set of body postures with some breathing exercises practiced in a ninety minute session that is divorced from the rest of the 22.5 hours in our day. Yoga is meant to be an experience in every moment, an intense enthusiasm in every moment. Each movement that comprises our 24 hours can be yoga if it is done with an awareness, enthusiasm and intensity. That is why Nithyananda says, ‘I am here to add life to your movements. Not more and more movements to your life’.
'Ashtanga Yoga; It is not eight steps to yoga. It is eight parts of yoga'.
Patanjali was the first master who created a scientific, logical formula to experience, sustain and radiate the energy of enlightenment. That formula is known as ashtanga yoga or theeight parts of yoga. Over so many thousands of years, the body language of Patanjali has been lost and only the verbal message has been recorded. Therefore the truths that he expressed have somewhat been misinterpreted.
Ashtanga Yoga, has over time been misinterpreted to mean eight steps that you must master in a linear fashion (one by one) to reach the state of yoga (samadhi).
Paramahamsa Nithyananda, who has experienced the very consciousness of Patanjali says, ‘No. Patanjali never intended that ashtanga yoga be practiced in linear fashion. It is not eight steps (ashta pati), it is eight limbs (ashta anga). All eight limbs should be practiced and experienced simultaneously’.
All the great masters from time immemorial have stated again and again that our very core is already samadhi (bliss). In Nithya Yoga, we also understand that our very core, our very center is samadhi and we don’t have to work step by step, one by one in order to experience that bliss.
We start Nithya Yoga practice with the clarity that we already are bliss (by cleansing the inner space with Nithya Dhyaan) and then all other parts of ashtanga yoga blossom from that experience.
How does this copper flower relate to Patanjali's Ashtanga Yoga and Nithya Yoga?
Patanjali attained m
aha samadhi (left his body) in the South Indian temple town – Rameshwaram. Patanjali’s samadhi (tomb) is in the main Shiva Temple in Rameshwaram. The covering of the tomb itself is enclosed with this copper plate with a carved seven petal flower.
The flower, if you observe carefully, has a central core and seven petals, not eight petals. The very essence of Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga seems to be there on the tomb itself.
All the 8 limbs are happening simultaneously because it is nothing but a deepening of levels. It is not that we have to first master yama (observances), niyama (social etiquette) and then master asana and then go into pranayama and so on.
When we are working with the body in the asanas (body postures) we bring the breath there. When we are with the breath, we go into ourselves, pratyahara. And when we are with ourselves and stay there, it is dharana. When we deepen that experience of staying with one thing it is dhyana (meditation). When we are in the space of meditation, that freeing, that liberation that happens in our energy is what is called samadhi. When samadhi happens in us, yama and niyama and all these do’s, don’ts and observances become our expression, not our learning. They are not something that is a discipline. The minute we are given a discipline, we want to break it. The whole of ashtanga yoga or what Patanjali wanted from yoga, what Patanjali wanted every single practitioner to experience, was the fulfilment of yoga, the completeness of yoga, the light of yoga. That is what Nithya Yoga is all about.
