Love yourself and you will love the world! 22 July

In the 21st century good looks have become a true religion. Mass media, movies and books have created certain ideals. Millions of people have inferiority complex because their bodies does not meet the ideal. We are go on exhausting diets, foolishly waste our energy in gyms to have firm buttocks, to shed inches off our thighs, belly or arms, put on creams, lotions and tonics, use make-up to make our eyes look more expressive, imitate healthy roses in our cheeks and create natural look with the help of powder and foundations. Why do we do all this? Because we don’t love ourselves. Our body is our physical cover; it is the abode of our spirit. The body tells a lot about the past, the future and the present of it owner. Yoga teaches people to love and respect their bodies. Asanas help to understand what parts of the body are blocked. On the physical level such blocks appear as diseases and disorders. If we look deeper, these blocks are our wrong thoughts, old grievances, negative emotions, false beliefs. A person practicing yoga starts listening to his or her body instead of hiding it under layers of clothes and make up. Imagine that your house is full of garbage and instead of throwing it away you hide it under a newspaper. But the pile is growing bigger and bigger and starts to stink… Yoga leads us to the deeps of our inner space, frees us from the garbage of the past. Inner beauty and purity of a person is always manifested in the outer beauty. The main principle of yoga is gradual evolution, absence of any forcing of the body. Nobody is perfect. Everyone has his own body; this is our shell for life on the Earth. We have to appreciate what we have. The world is full of beauty. Standards of beauty and ugliness are made up by people. By listening to our breath, learning asanas we start to realize the beauty of the human body. It is a perfect mechanism, so complex, delicate and magnificent. Yoga develops awareness. If you practice yoga it is impossible not to love and admire the world. You start to realize: new cells are born, old cells die, neurons move and transfer information, my body is perfection itself!

Author: Oxana Asabina