among practitioners of yoga
Yoga dictionary. Prakriti
There is such a thing as Prakriti in the philosophy of the Sankhya school. The term is also mentioned in the Yoga sutras of Patanjali. Prakriti is considered to be the feminine aspect of the manifestation of the Universe, which in symbiosis with the masculine aspect of the Universe — Purusha — forms the universe.
Prakriti in Sanskrit means ’cause`, `matter`or ‘nature’. Prakriti is the primordial nature, the first principle of the world. When Prakriti is not influenced by the gunas, it remains in its original state. And the moment the gunas begin to affect Prakriti, the balance of the gunas is disturbed, and Prakriti begins to change — to take different forms and form the material world. Continue reading
About consciousness. About personal choice. About a female subject. About Tantra and family relationships.
About consciousness
What is primary, being, or consciousness
This eternal philosophical question is directly related to our life. Being is the conditions in which we live. Being includes everything – the place of residence, the surrounding material environment, finances, the people around us. Any observant person can easily notice that among the materially wealthy people, not all people with good inner qualities are far from being. We can say the same about unsecured people. One can cite as an example the life of a criminal in prison – the prison itself will not teach the criminal the true human qualities. The life of a thief in the wild can, in fact, differ little from the life of a criminal in prison. The scenery may be different – he may have a good house, a servant and security, but it will be just a well-decorated prison, because the consciousness of such people, both in the wild and in the prison, will be the same. Continue reading
The purpose of yoga. Ashtanga Yoga Patanjali (part 2)
The importance of asanas in yoga practice
So, yoga classes begin with oneself, with one’s lifestyle and with a restructuring of one’s thinking. Yoga is primarily an internal individual work and there are no competitors in it, since only a person himself can show his life whether he is engaged in yoga or not. However, the third stage of yoga is asana, the use of various body positions. What are the different positions of the body used for? In order to enable the internal, hidden reserves of the human body. This step is used when the student subsequently wants to move on to more powerful internal practices. This stage is auxiliary, it helps to generate internal energy in order to subsequently safely and painlessly go to the next stages of yoga practice. In India, a ha-tha yoga system was invented for this purpose, in Tibet there is another, Tibetan yoga, there is also Chinese qi-gong gymnastics, which is also essentially a Chinese form of yoga. All kinds of martial arts came, in essence, from this source. Continue reading
