Yoga

The Yoga we teach at the institute and our meditation center Quinta Quixote is based on the essence of it, as taught by the enlightened master Patanjali. More than 1000 year ago he wrote the basic treatise of yoga. This yoga is not based on the current American approach which took out all essence and left us with gymnastics. Following Patanjali we flow slowly in and out a selected number of Yoga positions to enable our body-mind system to get focused on awareness in the here and now. Pranayama, certain breath yoga forms are part of our program. In the book of Patanjali it is made clear what exactly yoga is: "Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodha". To explain what this means, let's look at the meaning of the individual words.

Yoga: the word yoga means unification.

Chitta: can be translated as thoughts or memory.

Vritti: is translated by the word impression or disturbance.

Nirodha: means something like dissolving, letting it vanish.

Thus, we can say that this means: "Yoga is dissolving the activities of the mind." It is exactly this which leads to the emergence of awareness in the moment of now.