Yoga as practice, sadhana, lifestyle and culture

I do not consider yoga as just a practice; rather, in ‘Niranjanananda Yoga Samhita’, yoga is grouped into four categories: practice, sadhana, lifestyle and culture. This is how I see yoga. I see yoga as a practice, I see yoga as a sadhana, I see yoga as a lifestyle and I see yoga as a culture. This is the progression of yoga. The majority of people are only practitioners of yoga. They go to a yoga class, do some exercises, some relaxation, some meditation and walk out saying, “I’ve done my yoga.” Sorry, you have not done your yoga! You have only practised certain aspects of yoga. When you practice yoga, when you go and join a class, you are doing it out of curiosity or because of a personal reason. You are either stressed, therefore you want to do yoga, or you are having some physical complications and you want to practise yoga in order to manage them. You are practising yoga to suit your own need. You are not practising yoga to experience the aspirations of yoga. Those people who practise yoga to experience the goals set by yoga are known as sadhakas. Those who practise yoga just to feel good and light, a bit more flexible and get rid of stiffness, are not yoga sadhakas. For me, they are the people who are in the primary class learning A, B, C, D. For years, you keep writing your A and your B and your C. For years, you have a selection of twenty practices that you do every morning as your yoga practice. You cannot turn on the switch for a light bulb and expect the fan to come on. If you want to start the fan, you have to turn the fan switch on. You cannot do asanas and expect the kundalini to rise. That is an incorrect idea. There has to be a change in the understanding, appreciation and experience of yoga. One has to go through these four stages from practice to cultivation of yogic culture in order to realize the full depth of yoga.

I classify the hatha yoga teachers in the world as kindergarten teachers. All their life, all they speak to their students about is how wonderful this exercise is and what a beautiful feeling they have when they practise the exercise; the back pain went away, the stiffness went away. That is a kindergarten subject of yoga. The primary school subject of yoga is yoga sadhana, in which you have to pick up one thing and master it. If you have to learn the tables, you learn and master them. If you have to learn history, you read it and memorize it. If you have to learn math, geography, physics or chemistry, you absorb it: understand the process, develop the right mentality. That is sadhana. Yoga sadhana is practising yoga for its prescribed purpose. The goal of kriya yoga is awakening the kundalini, and you practise it with this goal in mind. You keep at it until your kundalini awakens. That is being a sadhaka. The effort that you make to beautify your life is sadhana. When you start incorporating yogic principles in your life, then yoga becomes part of your lifestyle. It is reflected in your behaviour and interactions. This disciplined, positive and awakened individual helps himself as well as others: family, society, the nation and the world. Yogic lifestyle is the college subject of yoga. When these principles become an inseparable part of your behaviour then they come forward as yogic culture. In this manner, yoga has to be seen progressively in terms of how it can become useful in the long run of life, not just as an hour’s practice every day.

Ganga Darshan, August 2011

From the book “Yoga in Daily Life, Yogadhrishti Series”, pg. 19-20, Sw. Niranjananda Saraswati