After a few weeks of practice, you’ll be able to spend some minutes in it. Eventually you will feel comfortable.
As I mentioned before, there are eight basic poses that will give you everything you need for good physical health — they can all be made more challenging depending on your
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flexibility. The basic eight are: Shirshasana (Head Stand); Sarvangasana (Shoulder Stand), Bhujangasana (Cobra, which leads into Bow Pose); Paschimatanasana (Full Back Stretch); Matsyendrasana (Spinal Twist); Maha Mudra (One Leg Back Stretch or Powerful Seal); Siddhasana (Easy Lotus); Padmasana (Lotus Pose).
Unlike bodybuilding or other purely physical routines, yoga is a holistic practice. Each pose performs many functions, not all of them obvious, that can stimulate internal organs and glands, increase the flow of blood, reduce stress, and improve overall health. Dhanurasana, Bow Pose, is a good example. It bends the spine backwards, which develops its flexibility and elasticity. At the same time, the body is resting on the abdomen, stretching and relaxing muscles there, improving digestion and peristalsis. This can help chronic constipation and liver dysfunction. It also sends a rush of blood to the abdominal viscera. So while it may be classified as a Back Stretch pose, it also has a powerful effect on the internal organs.
One more thing: It’s a mistake to expect benefits from any pose. Expectations make you restless because if you fail to get what you expect, you feel miserable. Yoga practice is an act of adoration to the Lord — you do it because it has to
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be done. If you have this mental attitude, your selfishness disappears and the benefits come.
In addition to practicing asanas there are other things you may want to do to hasten your development and achieve spiritual bliss.
• Use discrimination before any action, making sure your actions are honest, respectful, and right.
• Avoid cruelty. Often students will automatically abandon meat, not because it’s bad for the body, but because they don’t want to participate in the violence of eating their fellow beings.
• Practice pranayama, or breath control. The ancient masters believed that every life had a preordained or finite number of breaths in it. Pranayama was developed to extend the breath, and thus lengthen life. Most people practice pranayama in the morning, between 4 A.M. and 6 A.M., when the mind and senses are calm. After 4 P.M., once the body is warmed up from the day’s movement, they do asanas. You move 20 percent better then.
• Maintain a light diet — juices, fruits, salads — after 6 P.M. You’ll have a good sleep and wake up refreshed. Your stomach must be empty during sleep because that’s when the body repairs itself; with food in it the body is
occupied with digestion so you wake up more tired than
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when you went to sleep. Tha’s why some Buddhist monks never eat before noon or after 4 P.M.
Essentially, if you control your mouth — what you put into it and what comes out of it — you’ve controlled much of your mind already.
Some people hope to reach higher states of consciousness from yoga and meditation. It’s possible, but it requires much practice.
The old masters defined concentration as the ability to keep the mind on one point for twelve seconds without a break. Twelve concentrations — or two and half minutes — equal one meditation. Twelve meditations take a half hour. If you can concentrate without any break, if the flow of concentration is uninterrupted like oil pouring from a spout, then you’ve achieved the last state of yoga, samadhi, cosmic consciousness. Some yogis can enter samadhi as soon as they close their eyes; beginners take several minutes just to enter the state of meditation.