Yoga Asana

Asana is a body posture. It is a Sanskrit word used to describe a position of the body. Patanjali the founder of Astang Yoga defines asanas as “Steady and comfortable posture.” Traditionally many asana are practiced to achieve better physical and mental health. Asana have deep impact on the entire body and mind complex, it affects different systems in the body like muscular respiratory, digestive, excretory, reproductive endocrine, nervous system.

Yoga-Asana, are different stretching and relaxing body postures, which help us in maintaining a healthy and toned up body fit for prolonged sitting meditative posture. Yoga-Asana should be practiced regularly. They are quite different from other kind of exercises like workouts in a gym or aerobics etc. They do not make you stiff muscular or rigid powerful but more limber and supple. And when your body is more flexible, you become stronger in a different way, you become youthful. They make you more fluidly, more flow able, more adoptable and composed. Body becomes more conductive. Whole body works as a perfect lively unit. No knots, obsessions remain any more within. It is musical like a symphony, not as street noise. A perfect rhythm prevails in life, strings of the body-guitar, not too tight, not too loose; perfectly tuned and ready for the real music to commence.

Yoga-Asana helps you in a very amazing way that you may have never imagined about the outcome of it. Regular practice of Yoga-Asana makes your spinal column flexible and stronger, an indication of youthfulness, good health and vigor, irrespective of age, whatever it may be; which is the prime requisite for furthering the Yoga practice. Yoga-Asana are rejuvenating for the practitioners”

There is a series of Yoga-Asana, numbering more than 80. It is almost impossible to practice them all at a stretch and not required too. A few of them are selected and cited below (In order of practice), which should be practiced regularly and reverentially.

As regards to actual order of practice, Yoga can be divided in to four sequential segments broadly as follows.