What Does Yoga Mean?

What is Yoga? If you speak about yoga, people think it’s about twisting yourself into many different postures. It’s become a “new” form of exercise. But this is not what yoga is. Yoga literally means union. Union with what? The union is with the whole life that is happening around us and within us.

It’s important that we understand that we’re not an isolated system in this universe. We have to breathe, eat, drink, and excrete. These are all functions where it’s clear that we’re physically interacting with the rest of the world. However, since we get too identified with our own thought processes, we overlook the most basic and fundamental aspects of living on this planet. We forget where we get our food, our water, our air, or even our ideas. So, in a way, getting to this point of union means having a clear sense about where we came from and where we’re going. Let us hear what Sadhguru has to say about the meaning of yoga.

“Unfortunately, if you utter the word ‘yoga’, people think it is about sitting in some impossible posture. Postures are just a minuscule aspect of yoga. Yoga is not just about twisting your body, standing on your head or holding your breath – a circus artist can do all these things better than most yogis. Yoga means, in your experience, everything has become one.

The word ‘yoga’ means union. What is the union? What can unite with what? Right now, your idea of who you are – your sense and experience of who you are – is very strong. You are here as an individual, but what the trees exhale, you inhale, and what you exhale, they inhale. Or in other words, one half of your lung is hanging up there. Without it, your lungs within would be dysfunctional. Yet, in your experience, you think this individual is everything.

This is not everything. Not only in terms of breath – every subatomic particle in your body is in constant transaction with everything else in the existence according to modern physics. If this transaction stops, you will cease to exist. Scientists are proving to you that the whole existence is just one energy. For a long time, the religions of the world have been saying that God is everywhere. Whether you say, ‘God is everywhere” or you say ‘everything is one energy,’ it is still the same reality. It is just that a scientist has never experienced it, rather he has arrived at it through mathematical deductions. A religious person has not experienced it either; he believes it because it has been written in some scripture or declared by someone. If you are a hard case, who is not willing to settle for deductions or belief systems, you want to know it for yourself. Then you become a yogi.” – Sadhguru, Body – The Greatest Gadget