Traditional hatha yoga is a complete yogic path, including moral disciplines, physical exercises (for example, the Bhagavad Gita (Song of the Lord), which is part of the Mahabharata, contains extensive teachings on yoga. Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, the Upanishads, these and the treatises of Saiva Siddhanta, provide pioneering examples of experimental psychology. The purpose stated in the Yogasutras is the same for all yogas, that is, to free themselves from the determinism of transmigration. The actor-turned-Minister of Health, Shatrughan Sinha, was today all praise for Yoga and said that his practice of physical exercise for almost two decades has kept him in shape.
It would be possible to make yoga an occupation of life, devoting more and more time to its refinement. The six systems are the Vedic schools of Mimamsa, Vedanta, Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya and Yoga. Mahayana also developed and adopted yoga methods such as the use of mantras and dharani, pure land practices with the goal of being reborn in a pure land or buddhic field, and visualization. On its website, a testimony from Rabbi David Rosen, Ireland's former chief rabbi, says that yoga offers a lot of blessing and enlightenment and arguably helps to regain Jewish wisdom and practice that may have been lost.
Most of what is advertised as yoga around the world is not the yoga described in the Yoga Sutras or in any of the original texts. Jnana Yoga is the most arduous form, reserved for an elite and in it the yogin must go beyond the Maya plane. Farida Hamza, a Muslim woman living in the U.S. (pictured above), he had been doing yoga for two or three years when he decided he wanted to teach it.
Christian conservatives and other rigid and dogmatic religious sects have serious problems with Yoga. It indicates that mental Yoga exercises were known and played a substantial role in the religious and philosophical perspective of the time. But today, several renowned American doctors are conducting randomized yoga studies, and the National Institutes of Health are funding clinical trials of yoga to treat insomnia and multiple sclerosis.
