A. Effect of Posture on the Mind
When your body is healthy, your joints are moving into every direction, muscles are strong and flexible. All systems of the body are working well, then that is physical freedom. You will be able to enjoy the pleasure of life only then when your body is healthy. Yoga postures (Physical exercises) are designed to give you this. Yoga postures have different categories and they have profound physical and psychological benefits.
1. Hip openers And Core poses – According to Yogic psychology, we hold and repress emotions in our hips and stomach and this is the reason for many physical troubles in the body. By opening and strengthening the hips and core, we start releasing negative emotions. Core work is especially important as it works on your guts which lay under the navel. If a person has fear, it will disrupt the abdominal organs and create blockages, so coming out of fear can be a big help in the right direction of healing.
2. Backward bends – Heart opening postures can help to come out from depression. They allow the practitioner to gracefully open up the front of the body and straighten the spine as depressed people tend to have a hunched back and rounded shoulders. Modern psychology understands that if you change your posture you can change your mind will follow.
3. Forward bends – Forward bending postures are a well-known therapy for anxiety in yoga. If our heart comes parallel to the ground then it is a beautiful surrender to Mother Earth. Child pose in particular is a special position which resembles the state of a child in the mother’s womb. According to yogis, child pose is the most relaxing position and if we can stay in this position for a long period of time then unconsciously we will be transported to an earlier stage of childhood and even to the state of being in the womb as a pure life force.
4. Arm balancing poses – All arm balances help to stabilize emotions and improve confidence in life. Once you can support your body on your hands, it’s a sign that you are capable to present your ideas to the world and that you can handle yourself well. Through the improvement of arm balances you will be able to physically and emotionally take the charge into your own hands without any fight or sense of competition but rather with the quality of love.
5. Inversion – Inversions like headstand have amazing benefits and yogis have always given emphasis on them, even naming them the King and Queen, Father and Mother of yoga: headtstand and plough pose respectively. This is because if a person is bored in life, lacking vision and not living joyfully while standing on two feet, then the remedy is to flip the individual upside down! In an inverted pose, a person has to stand on the head, completely opposite to his normal form; his whole chemistry and vision will change and after a time we can change our whole attitude towards life.
6. Twisting postures- Yogis have a solution for when you feel stuck or indecisive in the life. Twist! A regular practice of twisting postures moves the stagnant energy in spine and help to give you a healthy change in the body and life too. As the spine is the main channel of life, when the energy is stuck then we can feel also unable to move in life. In yogic system, we determine the age of a person not by number of years but by how flexible his spine is. If your spine can move easily into all its six directions; forward, backward, side-ward, twist, then even if you are 100 years old, you are considered young. And if you cannot, then even if you are 20, you are considered old. So, for health of body, and mind we must maintain a healthy spine.
B. Breath and Mind Breath is the most important part of human life. It’s your very life force which determines your existence. If you know how to use your breath, it can be a great healing power for body and mind. It is the breath which holds the body, mind and energy (life force) together. Yoga breathing techniques are a great way to discover all the possibilities of human super strength. Yogic psychology says that when your mind is free from the fear of future and the guilt of the past, you gain a natural happiness within you. You can live and enjoy in the present moment; that is what is psychological freedom. With understanding of Yoga breathing techniques, it will give understanding of the mind too. Yogis have discovered that if you stop your breath and look inside you, you will find your thoughts will also stop. Simply put, you can gain control of your mind by controlling your breath.
C. Ultimate Freedom Now what is ultimate freedom? In yogic understanding of life, we all are dependent on outer situations to make ourselves happy. We put so many conditions on life; that life should be like this or I should have this. But if we look at our life and the lives of all others, we have found only pain, suffering, stress, violence; all geared to destroy humanity. Where is the joy? Yoga emphasizes that we are looking in the wrong direction. Joy and happiness is a state of positive mind, which can only be found within. Once we know and have experienced that nobody in life can make us happy or sad, we can realise that it lies in our own hands. We must take complete responsibility for our life, rather than blaming the situations or others. We must seek to find our joy with truth and authenticity. That is maturity in yogic tradition. Meditation, which is the 7th step of yogic science, gives us that freedom.
