What is the meaning of YOGA ?
The word yoga derives from Sanscrit, the oldes language of the planet- the "latin" of 
India. Yoga comes from the stem "yuj" which means "connection" - a connection between the real self, the soul, and the origin of the soul. Reestablishing this connection is the goal of all practices and helps us to achieve a perfect harmony within ourselves and the surrounding world.
The exercises most commonly known throughout Europe and the US, the asanas, belong to Hatha Yoga, which is a part of the eightfold yoga, Ashtanga Yoga. Ashtanga Yoga belongs to one of the three main paths, Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge. The other paths are Karma Yoga, the yoga of fulfilling human duties, and Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of transcendental dedication.
Inbound Yoga brings together advantages of all three paths and enables the practitioner to reach perfect harmony of body, mind and soul.
Yoga is the vehicle by which to start this voyage and the key to find strength, peace and love, which reside within each and every one of us. Liberating ourselves of day to day stress is the first step to discovering a more conscious and happy way of life. We are happy to present you Inbound Yoga as the contemporary way to practice this ancient wisdom.
Perfect Harmony
Harmony is the goal of lifes quest. Every living entity searches for happiness and satisfaction. But still we live in a world with so much suffering, in a world where ultimately everything ends with death. So how can one find harmony here? What does harmony actually mean and what means perfect harmony?
The answer of yoga is very complex. The instructions and the practice start with the harmony of body, mind and soul. The asanas, the body work of Hatha-Yoga, cleanse the body and lead to excellent health. Pranayama and dhyana do the same for the mind and create a perfect interaction between body and mind. The result of this practice is deep inner peace and balance. The mind clears up, fears vanish and the inner ease shines out of the yogi to his surrounding.
But this peace is just the first step, not the final goal of yoga. When the yogi advances more on his path he discovers his own spiritual nature, which is only temporarily connected to his body. He experiences that this spiritual identity is his true self and that to live according to this fact will free him of all pains of life.
The highest form of harmony is living according to the reason for activity of his true identity - flawless spiritual love, Prema Bhakti. This all-embracing love is that strong that even the search for harmony becomes secondary and only the object of this love stays in the focus of attention. And who is this "object"?
He is the origin of all being, the source and father of all souls.
Vedic Wisdom
The Vedas are Indian scriptures of wisdom from which all yoga paths and ways of hinduism are derived. They say about themselves that they are apaurusheya. That means that they do not origin in the limited world of human imagination but that they are extramundane, transcendental. Their wisdom is divine and not touched by time and space. To mankind they offer unlimited knowledge about the world and itself.
The three main paths of yoga guide us through different levels of self discovery until perfect consciousness.
- By Karma Yoga one learns that he is part of the big community of all living entities and that he should not behave egotistic, for his and all others sake.
- Jnana Yoga, the yoga of knowledge, teaches the yogi that his existence as a part of this community is jurt temporary and that therefore there is a higher goal to realise his own nature as an atma, not body, not mind but an eternal individual entity, a spark of immortal divine consciousness.
- Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of loving dedication, lets you realise that the real potential of the true self, the atma, is pure spiritual love, Prema Bhakti. This love is directed towards the origin of all being, who is a person, eternal, all-conscious and source of all kinds of happiness.
Scriptures are not the only source of wisdom and knowledge. Similarly there are the great masters in whom this knowledge lives and shines. People who realised the perfection of yoga are able to make these states of consciousness accessible to us in a way that is only possible through personal exchange, not by theoretical studies. They can give us hints and help on how to advance from our own current platform on the path of yoga.
Similarly it is important to visit places which had been sanctified by transcendental revelation and at those one can purify and prepare ones consciousness. These places are mostly sites where the eternal origin of all existence, God, in one of his many aspects revealed his nature and desires and by this had shown the way to all-embracing love.
Soul
According to vedic revelation the living entity consists of the unity of gross and subtle body as well as the atma. The gross body is made of flesh and bone, just what we normally name as the body. The mental parts like mind, intelligence, character, feeling, thinking is the subtle body or mental body. That means that not only the body as we know it is something external but also something that personal and intimate as ones own character. But, then what is our real identity?
Atma, the spiritual soul, is the vedic answer to that question, the definition of life. It is the answer on the question "Who am i?". But what is the meaning of atma?
Atma is the term for the true self of every living entity. The vedic scriptures describe this topic not from the view of a human or this world but from a devine standpoint, from a perspective beyond time and space. This makes the often asked question redundant, if the human has a soul because it is not the human that lives but the soul which gives life to the human body. When the body looses its functionality the atma with the subtle body remains and is forced to take a new gross body. The only exception to this are atmas who attained spiritual perfection.
Spiritual perfection does not only mean to theoretically accept but to perceive that the true identity is atma, a divine spark of consciousness - eternal, individually conscious and full of bliss. Similarly perfection means, not only to know ones own nature as atma but also to perceive the nature of ones origin, the nature of god. This nature is revealed according to the spiritual individuality of the atma, whose natural relation to the origin blossoms into divine love.
