Sankalpa: Sowing the Seed of Change

Do you know the science of setting a resolution or intention?

In the Vedic tradition, there is a powerful practice called Sankalpa, it’s like sowing the seed of change for whatever reality we want to cause. The Sanskrit word – San means altogether, Kalpa comes from Kalpana which means idea. So Sankalpa means that all my ideas and thoughts have united in only one thought, one idea, one goal, and that is defined in this undertaking. Therefore, Sankalpa is a resolution or commitment that is the most effective means of training our mind by reminding ourselves constantly of our highest possibility.

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Owning your body is integrity

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Do you know that whenever a disease happens, it means you have given up on your body?

If you look in, you will be able to see clearly that a disease develops because you have not taken ownership of your body. This means that you lack integrity with your body and have not taken responsibility to maintain it.

Integrity is the first Cosmic principle which I learned from my Guru, Paramahamsa Nithyananda. He said that every human being must understand and live life with integrity because it is only with integrity that life happens. Your life starts happening only when you start owning your body with integrity. Without integrity, the body may be there, you may be there but there is no relationship. You experience yourself as a fragmented person and naturally you start inviting diseases and disorders to your body-mind.

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Yoga is about Adding Life to Your Movements

If you were to ask someone – what is Yoga?

Immediately, the typical answer would be ‘Yoga is a physical form of exercise called asanas (postures) used to promote strength, flexibility and balance in the body’. In the modern society especially in the West, yoga has been reduced to just a physical exercise with some breathing techniques, some chanting and some meditation thrown in to create an exotic appeal.  Some of the latest fads include an obsession with precision of different complex postures and a belief in the illusion that excessive loss of water in hot yoga is equivalent to a good workout. The Western society largely sees yoga as another form of stress-buster or stretching aerobic exercise. But what they are seeing are merely the side benefits of yoga. It is almost like going to a restaurant and reading the menu without tasting the food!  This is so different from what Patanjali, the father of Yoga is advocating in the Yoga Sutras! The mainstream society is only able to catch the physical dimension of yoga but not the authentic body language of yoga.

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