About the genre of yoga

In the second century BC, Patanjali wrote the Yoga Sutra [Note 1], summarizing the various yoga practices. Therefore, there is the famous "Eight branches of yoga", namely, eight aspects of practice: (1) prohibition (keeping precepts),(2) persuasion (diligence),(3) sitting,(4) breathing (breathing),(5) control,(6) holding (concentration),(7) meditation (meditation), and (8) samadhi.

The "Yoga Sutra", which has always been regarded as a norm more than 2,000 years ago, reveals to us that yoga is an all-round practice of the body and mind, which requires the comprehensive cooperation of different methods to achieve liberation. Forefathers have realized that many lessons are helpful to practice, such as proper diet, discipline, doing good (karma), exercise to regulate the spine (conditioning), paying attention to breathing (breathing), and even chanting mantra (bhakti), increasing knowledge (Jnana), awakening kundalini, etc. are all of great benefits.

However, if Patanjali has a spirit in heaven, he will definitely shake his head and sigh when he sees future generations dividing these cultivation skills apart, forming their own schools, and their rigid dogmatism. He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of meditation (dyana) and meditation, but he rarely touches on "regulating the body". Obviously, even if cartilage is used to regulate the spine and thereby regulate different energy centers (three meridians and seven chakras), it should be diagnosed and prescribed, and each action only corresponds to one problem. Unfortunately, today's people not only regard this kind of sports yoga (formally known as Hatha Yoga Hada/Hada Yoga, also known as Sun and Moon Yoga) as everything yoga, but also practice all poses in a package (Asana Formula) without diagnosis, which is really off the track. It was like swallowing the medicine cabinet one by one in one go. There are also titles such as weight-loss yoga and beauty yoga that appear, which can be said to be far from the topic. (Internship Editor: Lin Xiaodong)