The Aim of Yoga

Yoga, from the Sanskrit root uYuj, gives us our word "union." Returning to wholeness, therefore, is the essential meaning of Yoga. The heart of Yoga lives in realizing the path by which we unite our finite self with Infinite Being. The vision of Yoga is an unbroken awareness of our oneness with Spirit. This new level of consciousness evolves through yogic practices aimed at developing an ever-increasing awareness of the various levels of our experience: physical, energetic, emotional, spiritual, and so forth.

Yoga teaches that what keeps us from consistently experiencing ourselves as truth, bliss and consciousness (known in Sanskrit as satchitananda) are obstructions, both obvious and subtle. Through these obstructions a disharmony is created within us and is considered the root cause of our dis-eases. In other words, hidden conflicts and unacknowledged suffering, deep feelings of alienation, despair, loneliness and separation that lodge themselves as mental disturbance, emotional trauma, and physical disease prevent us from experiencing uninterrupted satchitananda in our daily life.

In response to this alienation from our Self, Yoga assists us in holding these unconscious patterns up to the light of our awareness. Through responding in a self-nurturing and deliberate way to what is revealed, the practitioner develops compassion, strength, healing, and inner wisdom. In experiencing our true nature more deeply, we also see more clearly into the nature of our inter­relationship with the world around us. In this way we nurture healing in our family, community, and environment, and on the planet.

The primary aim of Yoga was elegantly described on many different occasions by Swami Kripalu:

"The purpose of Yoga is the attainment of happiness, peace and bliss. The meaning of Yoga is the union of individual consciousness with Shiva consciousness, with God. Yoga is the meeting of the drop and the ocean. The ultimate result of all Yoga is purity of mind and body."

The ability to know all parts of our selves with compassionate self-awareness, and to maintain contact with our core Self in the face of all the difficult and disturbing events of our passing lives becomes the balm that quiets the colliding thoughts, eases the hurt in the body, and assuages the desperate emotions.
In short, Yoga is a science of self-awareness that seeks the realization of the unity of our humanity with our divinity, thereby creating health and wholeness.