I interviewed a very good friend of mine. She graduated from the philosophy department and has many years of yoga experience.
Q: Have you ever heard of yoga? Have you ever done yoga yourself?
A: Of course I’ve heard of yoga, and I’m also a yoga lover myself.
Q: When you are practicing yoga, what is your physical and mental feeling? For example, physically or psychologically?
A: Yoga actually talks about a process of integration, allowing people to completely immerse themselves in the present. When I take a very rhythmic breath with the teacher, I feel that the whole person’s essence and spirit have reached an unprecedented pure state. I like the yoga teacher’s words very much: breathe out worry and pressure, and breathe in health.
Q: What do you think people have wrong understanding of yoga?
A: I think many people practice yoga with a wrong mentality of comparison. They always want to challenge a very difficult position. I think it is totally unnecessary. Because position is not the most important place of yoga since ancient times. And the core of yoga is to focus on yourself. It is better to compare yourself with yourself as long as you do better today than you did yesterday, or keep it. Another mistake I think is that everyone thinks yoga can help you lose weight, but generally speaking, yoga may help you to correct your posture at most. The main reason for practicing yoga may be that yoga helps you improve your usual attention to healthy diet and keeping a good rest, rather than directly losing weight through yoga.
Q: What do you know about traditional religious yoga
A: I know yoga comes from India. I think yoga may be the same to India as Tai Chi to China. Yoga is actually a concrete manifestation of Indian religion. I don’t know much about the specific teachings of yoga.
Q: If you have a chance, would you like to know more about traditional religious yoga
A: Of course! Because yoga is a very good exercise, I am certainly very interested in understanding its origin.