SELF-DIRECTION The spiritual teachers from The Yoga Institute, Smt. Hansaji Yogendra and Dr. Jayedeva Yogendra visited a yoga center in Los Angeles, someone from the center told them; ” Never use the word duty, people in the western world take it as an 8-5 job responsibility. They feel stressed by their jobs.” Living a self-directed life depends mostly on our education, the culture we live in and how we make sense of our natural abilities. Many life activities are imposed on us since childhood. Because of this, we develop a strong sense of living under pressure and stress. Parents, society inflict a strong sense that life is stress andRead More →

FOUR MAIN LIFE ATTITUDES In Classical Yoga we learne and practice four main life attitudes; Dharma Bhava – Life duty, self-direction, virtues of survival,  Jnana Bhava – Self-study, self-understanding, knowledge, and learning, Vairagya Bhava – Creating a larger understanding of the reality of life, building objectivity and detachment, Aishwarya Bhava – Will persistence, obtaining freedom by becoming self-reliance, forbearance, and  strong-minded, The attitude of duty helps us to acquire a balanced state of mind and find; self-direction, acceptance, commitment, faith, and quietude. Dharma Bhava – Life Duty Karma from Sanskrit means actions, work, our personal actions and there effect on our future. The main duty in lifeRead More →

GITANJALI – SONG OFFERINGS I KNOW not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement. The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My heart longs to join in thy song but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master! /Rabindranath Tagore/ www. mariahealthyoga.comRead More →

DISCOVER ATTITUDES (BHAVAS) Bhava in Sanskrit means “feeling”, “emotion”, “mood”, “mental attitude” or “devotional state of mind.” The goal of yoga is to help us “to see” and make unconscious attitudes conscious. Yoga practice invites us to inquire and evaluate how certain attitudes work for us and how they align with the choices we make. For most of us, attitudes are our blind spot. When we discover our attitudes we also discover that they are the root cause of our emotions, actions, and thinking. The quality of our cognition depends in totality on the attitudes we adopt in life.  To discover our attitudes we have to be aware ofRead More →