historians date back two centuries before the birth of
Christ, elaborated the principles of yoga for the benefit of
humanity.
In his classic work, the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali sets the
goal of yoga as nothing short of total freedom from suffer-
ing. To fulfill this worthy intention, Patanjali elaborated
the eight branches of yoga. Each of these components of
yoga helps you shift your internal reference point from
constricted to expanded consciousness. As you move
from local to nonlocal awareness, your internal reference
point spontaneously transforms from ego to spirit, which
enables you to see the bigger picture when facing any
challenge.
According to Patanjali, whenever we are solely iden-
tified with our ego, we bind ourselves to things that do not
have permanent reality. This may be attachment to a
relationship, a job, a body, or a material possession. It
may be attachment to a belief or an idea of the way
things should be. Whatever the object of attachment is,
the binding of your identity to something that resides in
the world of forms and phenomena is the seed cause of dis-
tress, unhappiness, and illness. Remembering that the
real you is not trapped in the volume of a body for the
span of a lifetime is the key to genuine freedom and joy.
Yoga is designed to give you a glimpse of your essential self
by taking you from deep silence into dynamic action and
back again to profound stillness. In the practice of the
Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga program, you will experience
this full range of yoga—stillness to activity and back to
stillness.
...24 The Seven Spiritual Laws of Yoga