by Alan Muskat
Patanjali, considered the father of yoga, wrote that “the objective of all yoga is to inhibit the modifications of the mind.” In other words, the goal of yoga is to stop thinking: to get out of your head. What happens when you do that? It’s not just calming; it’s eye-opening. You see things as they really are, not through rose or gray-colored glasses, those “modifications of the mind.” You get REAL. And when you get real, you heal.
Yoga means “yoke.” What yoga binds us to is Brahman, i.e., Reality. By getting back in touch with what is, we feel alive once again.
To get real is to come back to your senses. You can’t do that in your head; only in your body. To heal, you have to feel what’s real. The word health means “wholeness.” To heal is become a whole person again: mind, spirit, and body, all one. But that’s not all.
The word religion means “to bind (back together).” Yoga, like any spiritual practice, is about getting whole. This is not the selfish pursuit of personal healing; this is finding out who you really are. Your feelings bring out your compassion. Why? Because we have never really been separate. Yoga brings us back to reality: that we are all in this together. No more loneliness, no self-induced suffering. That’s yoga. That’s reality. What do you have to lose?
Alan Muskat is co-director of The REAL Center, “sharing the journey of Relationship, Embodiment, and Awakened Living.”
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Our thoughts really do create the vibratory frequency of what we draw to ourselves. You don’t have to take my word on this- it is an incredibly easy hypothesis to test for yourself. Right now, as you read these words, allow a back beat of gratitude to begin to rise within you. Simple gratitude: gratitude for the breath that is entering and leaving your body, gratitude for the ability to see, hear, feel, taste, touch. It is my deepest hope that you, dear reader, have safe shelter and adequate nourishment, and so, gratitude for these aspects of life. I have found that simple gratitude deepens from my heart into my belly and rapidly moves from a trickle of sensation to a full and mighty river of gratitude. Once you begin with the simplest gratitude, there is no stopping the awareness of the many, many blessings in your life. And, truly, even when we are in hard, cold places in life there is always something to be grateful for. By beginning there, with the smallest of appreciations, we can often travel to the place of stunning beauty within, gratitude for simply being alive.
Sierra Hollister is a green yogini living in the mountains outside of Asheville. She has been teaching Kundalini Yoga in Asheville for the past 16 years. You can catch her class, twice a week, at