Yoga - as in the Bhagwat Geeta

Yoga is not just skin but muscle and even mind deep.
Yoga is liberation from worldly matters and union with the cosmos.
Yoga is a human code of conduct concerning physical, mental and spiritual being of a soul.
Here is a beautiful extract from Devdutt Pattanaik's book JAYA, as Lord Krishna preaches Arjuna in the battle field of kurukshetra -
" With your head - analyse the situation and discover the roots of your emotions. Why do you feel what you feel? Are you being spurred on by your ego? Why do you wish to fight? Is it from the desire to dominate your enemies and win back your territories? Is it rage which motivates you, the desire for vengeance and justice? Or are you detached from the outcome, at peace with the act you are about to perform? If these questions don't come to your mind, Arjuna, you are not practising gyan yoga.
With your heart - have faith in the existence of the soul. Accept that nothing happens without a reason. Accept that all experiences have a purpose. Accept that the soul does not favour either you or the kauravas, that there is a reality greater than what you can perceive. Accept that infinite occurrences of the universe cannot be fathomed by the finite human mind. Surrender unconditionally, even in the absence of evidence, to the truth of the cosmos. In humility, there is faith. When there is faith, there is no fear. Is it faith guiding your hand, Arjuna, or is it fear? If it is fear, then you are not practising bhakti yoga.
With you actions - engage with the world around as a human, not animal. Animals have no intellect; their flesh is geared towards survival alone. That is why they are fettered by the law of jungle ( matsya nyaya) using their strength and cunning to stay alive. Humans have intellect and yearn for meaning beyond survival. They have the unique ability to empathise with this need in others too for they can sense the soul encased in all flesh. Humans alone of all living creatures can reject the law of the jungle and create the code of conduct based on empathy and directed at discovering the meaning of life. This is dharma. To live in dharma is to live without fear. To live in dharma is to act in love. To live in dharma is to have others as a reference point, not oneself. Function therefore in this war nor like that insecure dog that barks to dominate and whines when dominated, but like that secure cow, that provides milk freely and follows the music of the divine. Do you fight this war to break the stranglehold of jungle law in human society, Arjuna? If not, you you do not practice karma yoga."

STORY OF A JAMMED DOOR

When I joined my first job in the big city Mumbai with lots of aims and ambitions of exploring the city, working hard towards self progress, working out daily, enjoying the big city life; I ended up returning home after work, all exhausted of train journey, work load and over time. I ended up every night in front of T.V. with the feeling of wasting the whole day without any activity that could refresh me or energize me. I used to keep flipping the channels to feel as if I am doing something more than just the usual till my eyelids got heavy and forcefully shut me down for the day.

Day after day, week after week and season after season, I saw my life passing by. One similar day, after a long day at site and in office; returning to my T.V. I realized the door to my apartment got jammed. I tried various speeds and finger skills to turn the key the right way, kicked the damn door, pushed it with all my strength, punched it till my knuckles were bruised, banged my head on it. All my collected frustration of many months busted out in a loud cry. I sat against the door and cried for a long time. I don't know if I was crying for not being able to return to my boring everyday life or was I so used to it that it scared me of where to go and what to do?

After the tears dried, I called up a friend whom I was supposed to call every weekend to hangout together but I did not. She came to my rescue and then we went out for dinner and a late night stroll on the beach to do all the catching up. I realized that a good day was just a jammed door away. That day changed my further outlook towards life. Everyday I tried wrapping up early at office no matter what, went to meet friends, joined a direction course I wanted to try my hand on since long and also locked myself out of the apartment every weekend to go and explore what the city had to offer.

Since then I have felt many a times that life gets stuck at many points, at many instances, when we loose our ultimate focus no matter how much we had sworn by it or worked towards it and end up caught in the routine. At these times, the feeling of helplessness, fear of change and many such virtual blockages start bulling us until a "jammed door" comes to our rescue in some form.

I have, hence understood the significance of such "jammed door" but have still not attained the power to eradicate its need. I still find myself longing for a jammed door to forcefully turn myself the other way or the desired way.

ABOUT LEARNING

What learning does to us?

We start with the assumption that we are zero. We show that we are ready to be moulded any which ways it takes to learn the particular art. We become acceptable to criticism and appreciation from the teacher and the world around. We become fragile to slow grasping and stagnant learning. And in the end when we achieve what we aimed for, all these stages in between are hardly remembered. The joy of learning makes those stages insignificant which actually were the learning curves that didn't just teach us the art but revealed our fears, strengths and inspirational moments. We need to open ourselves and grow sensitive to the process of learning as it shows how we treat ourselves throughout the journey. It carves out the cowardice in us when at certain point we decide to back out, it reveals courage in us when after many falls and backing out attempts, we still hang on and the strength is revealed when hanging on is not enough and we push ourselves hard to excel in the art.

But this isn't it. This learning process isn't limited to personal realisation and growth but it keeps a check on our social behavioural patterns. While learning something; we meet people who have already mastered it, people who are ready to share their learning and their weaknesses, people who would just boost about their achievements and make it look like a simplest task that we should have learnt earlier in age, people who have spent ages trying to learn, have failed but are still hopeful and haven't given up yet and some who have given up and are disappointed with themselves or with those who taught them. Dealing with all sort of people and understanding what to and what not to grasp from them is itself a learning. And the way we deal with them improves only when we are aware of this learning process and conscious towards the changes within and around.

Then what goes wrong? Why and when does our progress start deteriorating? Why does the growth stop?

When we are juvenile, we are constantly learning and so we possess all those godly characters of humbleness, innocence, curiosity, awe and transparency. As we become adults and our physical growth stops, we happen to discontinue our mental and spiritual growth as well. We consider what we know as ultimate knowledge and start replacing humbleness with arrogance, innocence with cunningness, curiosity with indifference, awe with inertia and transparency with rigidity.

And there we go wrong. Human mind has no limitations of aging and dying, it is we who impose these limitations. We become the hindrance to our own growth, our own evolution.

To keep evolving, to keep growing we should keep learning something new every year, every month and every moment of our lives.