Finishing: Liyuan

Dr. Kausthub Desikachar shared yoga sutras online, and I will share my understanding of each sutra in a short way, so that everyone can have an overall understanding of yoga philosophy. First of all, I want to thank and miss Patanjali. Only through his presentation of Yoga Sutra can we understand the schools of yoga. At the same time, I want to thank and remember my grandfather Krishnamacharya and my father T.K.V.Desikachar, who taught me their interpretation of Yoga Sutra. It is because of this inheritance that I can share with you here. With the memory of them, we begin the first section of patanjali's Yoga Sutra.

This scripture is called pratij? Bible, Pilates? A means promise, and the corresponding word is atha. It has many meanings, and the most interesting one I want to share with you is: ready.

Asa means: I am ready; I made up my mind. I was ready for this. When the teacher said Asa, he said, I am going to teach you, because I also practice yoga under the guidance of my own teacher, and now I am fully capable and qualified to teach you; When students say atha, it means that I am ready to study. I won't take my previous ideas and inherent knowledge. I will learn with an open mind and make a commitment to learn. So it is very important for teachers and students to make commitments, because yoga is a very long-term learning process. You can't just study for one day. You must devote your life to learning yoga. This is pratij? This means that both teachers and students promise to learn yoga. No matter how long, in the traditional concept of yoga, you can only have one teacher, but not many teachers. If you promise to learn from one teacher, you can't look around for other teaching. This is what Asa said about commitment.

Another aspect of Asa's readiness means that teaching is a gift, and the teaching of yoga is undoubtedly a more precious gift. When a teacher says atha, it means that I am ready to share this heartfelt gift with you now. Dear friends, teaching always comes from the heart; When a student says atha, it means: Teacher, I am ready to accept this gift with my heart now. Any form of gift, whether it is object, teaching or even love, should be accepted from the heart. If a student can't accept the teacher's sincere teaching from the heart, then all this is meaningless; It is useless if students accept knowledge with heart and teachers don't teach it with heart; Any other form of gift is the same. Friendship and love must open their hearts to him. This is the meaning of the word atha.

Let's look at the next word, yoga, which is the theme of one of our yoga sutras. It will be defined in the next section. Patanjali will clearly show what he means by yoga. The word yoga has many meanings, not only the meaning of yoga we understand, but also many other forms. We will learn patanjali's definition of yoga in the next section. But here, the first thing we need to understand is that yoga is a connection and a combination. That's what I want to tell you. Teaching comes from the heart, so students and teachers must have a heart-to-heart connection when they start learning. Only in this way can yoga happen; Similarly, our relationship with the body, our relationship with work, our relationship with nature, our relationship with family, our relationship with children, partners, wives and husbands, if we want to realize yoga in these relationships, we must have a deep connection with our hearts, which is very important. Yoga is not produced from the body, not from analysis, not from intellectual thinking, but from our hearts.

The last word anusasanam: This is also a very important word, which has two meanings:

1. Anubawa-? āsanam, this means that yoga is a science based on experience or experience. Yoga is an experience that must be experienced by us. Yoga is not intellectual, but can be obtained through analysis. This is very important because when we talk about experience, we experience it through our own individuals and our own nature. Even if we experience the same thing, our experience and feelings about it are different, because the experience is very personal. We go to a mountain, some people experience it this way, others experience it that way, because experience is very subjective, and so is yoga. So friends, from the beginning of Yoga Sutra, we can know that patanjali emphasized the individual experience of yoga, which is the principle of Winnie Yoga. Yoga and Winnie's yoga are inseparable. Yoga is Winnie's yoga, Winnie's yoga is yoga. These are personalized experiences, which is also the beauty of yoga philosophy. Instead of standardizing things, it will emphasize its subjectivity.

2.？ āsu anu？ Me? All this shows that we must learn yoga according to the teacher's instructions. Yoga can't be learned by self-study. You should listen to the teacher's guidance. In the first section, patanjali made it very clear that if you don't have a good qualified teacher to guide your yoga study regularly, then yoga will not succeed. He told us through anusasanam that he also had his own teacher, and he said that he would learn from his own teacher. Now he is going to teach all of us, so my dear classmates, the word anusasanam means that yoga must be practiced and studied under the guidance of teachers.

To sum up, the whole sentence atha-yogaanusanam means to make us understand that we must be prepared to accept the heartfelt teaching of yoga, and we must be prepared to make a commitment to yoga learning. No matter how long this time is, we should study and practice yoga from the heart, and more importantly, we should study and practice under the guidance of a qualified teacher, who should also have a good teacher. Thank you, my dear friends!

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