What Does Yoga Mean (to me)(today)

The Sanskrit word yoga translates to English as union or to yoke.  Yoke, as in an ox hooked up to pull a cart.  I’ve heard it explained that the ox is a metaphor for power or energy, the cart is material reality, and the presumed driver of the cart is the intelligence of the system.


In  practicing yoga, we can bring our energy, material reality, and intelligence together.  But there is a bigger purpose than union or bringing these things together.  Though bringing ourselves into union, alignment, presence, etc. is huge.  If we look at the cart and the ox, the reason to bring them together is for the driver to get the cart and/or the contents of the cart somewhere, with less personal effort.  To purposefully get our collective selves to our desired location, with less personal effort.  That sounds good.


Some potential locations I’ve found through 30 years of practice include; understanding myself better, more capacity to change my habits, feeling better in my body, feeling better in my mind, having more positive relationships, and finding a greater capacity to accept (and even love) myself.


These aren’t one time journeys.  Some of these I seek out and move toward again and again.