Yoga, Its Health Benefits and Discovering the True Self

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the lived experience of yoga practitioners, and their search for the true self. A thousand years before the birth of Christ and for five subsequent centuries, it has been theorized that yoga flourished in cities known today as India and Pakistan (Chaline, 2001). People practiced yoga to become closer to God. Yoga literally means to 'yoke' or to be in union (Satchidananda, 1990). According to the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, yoga is the "science of the mind" (Satchidananda, 1990, p. xi). Richard Freeman, a student and teacher of yoga for 38 years, in an interview with Bonnie Horrigan (2004), describes yoga as "a meditative discipline and a way of gaining insight into the nature of the mind and reality." He believes that "yoga is ultimately freedom or liberation, and its benefit is much more than simply good health" (p. 65). According to Freeman, yoga is the undoing of the harm people do to their bodies as a result of modern living. He states that "we often hold the body or posture the body based on past experiences" (p. 66). Yoga can assist in reversing this postural conditioning.