Why yoga?
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Guest article by Dharmapriya
I can just hear some people saying, “Isn’t meditation enough? Why do I have to do yoga as well?” Well, you don’t. But maybe you want to. Or at least consider practicing some yoga, if you are serious about trying out meditation.
Why? Well, for a start you have a body, and it does not go away in meditation. So consider the following.
Yoga helps with meditation posture
Usually we sit upright when we meditate. Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t quite as easy. How often do we actually really sit upright in everyday life? And if we do, then that rarely lasts more than a couple of minutes before we get up, move, fidget…
But to meditate we want to sit quietly upright, erect, poised, our chest open - and at the same time relaxed. It is wonderful to sit like that, but we need to practice sitting like that, and it requires both flexibility and back strength. Yoga helps develop the back muscles so one’s posture is naturally more upright and so one can hold it far longer in comfort.
But why flexibility to sit up straight? Well, often our shoulders, chest, neck or back are stiff, which means we fight against ourselves physically to sit erect. Yoga postures make the muscles in these areas more pliable.
Naturally you do not need to sit in Lotus to meditate, but a lot of people do like to sit with some sort or cross-legs. To do this you need movement in your groins and hips if you do not want to damage your knees over time.
Yoga gives energy for meditation
To meditate we need energy, and Iyengar yoga frees up lots of it! But some people may say, “I’ve got too much energy, so sitting still - or staying with the meditation practice - is difficult.” Yoga helps here too, since it does not just liberate energy. It opens up the right kind of energy.
It is no coincidence that yoga postures are seen as a prerequisite for meditation in some Indian traditions. How is that? They develop the appropriate energy, partly since they work subtly on the psychophysical organism. But at least as important is the beneficial manner of practising yoga, namely with awareness - being present in the body and posture, or at least trying to!
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