IS YOGA GOOD EXERCISE?
by Abbie Galvin

August 6th 2012

The art of good yoga is to fight your propensity to be habitual. By practicing yoga in this manner you generate heat, moisture, and agitation. Your body is designed to" fit" so that it fits your environment. The practice is designed for each of you to demand out of yourselves that "fit".

When you begin studying yoga you come to the mat "personally" with your " first nature" as your information. The way that you naturally do a pose, is to use whatever is available to you, your strong back, your strong legs, etc. Eventually you develop a "second nature": the capacity to work not personally but archetypically to find a pose. In this way you have to be conscious, and purposeful. You have to use the imagination, the forms and the breath to practice consciously rather than using whatever information you already have. While yoga isn't specifically designed for aerobics, it demands a physical effort to build a cathedral inside your body, which by its very nature is rigorous.