Handbook of Yoga

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Yoga is an exact science. It aims at the harmonious development of the body, the mind and the soul. Realizing the potentialities of Yoga, there is phenomenal growth in India and abroad of Yoga universities, institutes, colleges, school engaged in teaching, research and practice or Yoga. University grants commission is also encouraging the education of Yoga. Yoga aims at controlling the mind and its modifications. The path of Yoga is an inner path whose gateway is your soul. Yoga is harmony between the individual and the cosmos, between thought and action, between soul and God, between organism and respiration. As science probes greater depths of the secrets of nature, the relevance of Yoga too is bound to grow, and a day is bound to come when human society will find no other way exact Yoga to come out of the present dead end of a tunnel-out into the broad sunshine of tranquility, peace and happiness.

Yoga is one of the systems in Man's eternal quests for freedom from sufferings and achieving spiritual enlightenment. Its origin is as old as the ancient Indian civilization. Formally Yoga was systematised as one of the systems of Indian Philosophy, and widely accepted among most of philosophical schools including Buddhism and Jainism as general foundation for spiritual discipline. Buddha himself practiced Yoga under two teachers before his enlightenment. Yoga Sutra complied by Patanjali (B.C.3-) is the most authoritative treatise of Yoga. The subject matter in Yoga Sutra is to achieve Samadhi (mental absorption) through controlling the modification of mind. It represents the prototype of theory of mind in Indian tradition.

Mind is the instrument of knowing, but it is often influenced by inner disturbing factors. It is necessary to reduce these factors by self-discipline so that the mind can grasp the object as it is. Inability to perceive the thing as it is the root cause of the sufferings and it can be eradicated by developing discriminative insights through meditation. Yoga is closely related another Indian philosophical system called Samkhya, which also asserts that three types of sufferings, adhyatmika (of body and mind), adhibautika(by contact and relationship), adhidaivika (due to unseen factors) can be eradicated by developing discriminative insights(viveka) through reasoning.

Meditation, in one form, is practiced with the use of a symbol. In this form of meditation you encourage your awareness to remain focused upon just the symbol, instead of becoming identified with, caught up in and attached to the series of thoughts and emotions that would otherwise occupy it. The symbol provides a prop, a single object which you sense in an effortless way as you gently encourage your awareness to remain on it alone. Sensing the symbol alone assists in reducing the activity of your thinking mind, because your mind no longer feeds off its own activity, from one thought or emotion to the next. Stabilizing your awareness upon just the meditation symbol allows the activity of the surface level of your mind, your thinking mind, to "wind down," to decrease in activity, slowly but surely.

This is a reference book. All the matter is just compiled and edited in nature, taken from the various sources which are in public domain.

The book delineates every aspects of Yoga. It not only provides the systematic history of succession of Yogic knowledge, starting from the beginning, but it also spreads light on the various aspects of Yoga. It contains knowledge of practical and insightful yogic instructions for success in physical and spiritual life and a guideline with special focus on Teaching-learning methodology of Yoga.