Yesterday I enjoyed Victoria BC. While there, I saw a yoga studio right next to where we were eating our breakfast. And since the style of yoga was Iyengar, I got to wondering what the difference was between the yoga I enjoy (I refer to it simply as flow yoga 🙂 but it’s real name is Ashtanga) and Iyengar. So when we got home I looked it up. Iyengar is best known for proper alignment. There are therefore many props used to enforce this alignment like blocks, blankets, bolsters, chairs & straps. It’s funny because as a yoga lover, these props are very familiar to me.
After looking up a definition for yoga online, I found the following, from wikipedia:
“Yoga (/ˈjoÊŠÉ¡É™/; Sanskrit: योग, Listen) is a physical, mental, and spiritual practice or discipline that denotes a variety of schools, practices and goals[1] in Hinduism, Buddhism (including Vajrayana and Tibetan Buddhism[2][3][4]) andJainism,[5][6][7][6] the best-known being Hatha yoga and Raja yoga.”
I love that they classify yoga as a physical, mental & spiritual practice as I am a great believer in this truth. Because I tend to favor mental & spiritual, generally, I believe yoga is predominantly mental & spiritual (but again, I do realize, this is likely personal). Of course, the physical part is a huge benefit. Yogis are very flexible for one. This guy (who was obviously a yogi) that was sitting next to me at a meetup showing the yogananda video, was sitting in such a way – knees bent, pointing in opposing directions  and feet up off the floor – above and below his legs. Basically a twisted criss-cross apple sauce shape. (If you’re a yogi, hopefully you know what I’m referring to, even though I feel I’m doing an inadequate job describing it). I wonder seriously if I ever got up the courage to try a headstand – as I can’t recall. Seeing as I’ve been “gifted” with a brain injury while at a yoga camp this dichotomy would be quite fascinating.