Yoga is a state of being – not an exercise regime.
- Practice yoga for health, inner peace, or enlightenment. You are a yogi or a yogini if you practice yoga for health, beauty, strength, relaxation, or healing. You are a yogi or yogini if you practice yoga for inner peace, happiness and enlightenment.
- Be a theist or an atheist. In modern yoga, your religion can be your preference. Yoga teaches the unity of all religions. You can be a Yogi and a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist or an Atheist. An Atheist can be a yogi, if he or she wants to realize inner peace and happiness.
- Practice yoga, meditation, and positive thinking. The three great books of yoga are the Yoga-Sutra from Patanjali, the Hatha-Yoga-Pradipika from Goraksha, and the Bhagawad Gita from Krishna. Therefore the basic yoga techniques are positive thinking (Patanjali), meditation (Patanjali), body work (Goraksha), praying (Krishna), and loving all beings (Krishna).
- Learn the five basic features: truth, peace, love, self-discipline and happiness. And have patience – enlightenment will appear when the time is right for you.
- Purify yourself and become happy. Spiritually, human beings can be compared to onions. Tension and conflict must be dissolved layer by layer. When one layer is peeled away, the next quickly appears at the surface until the inner core is revealed. At this point, a lasting inner joy is found, and the yogi or yogini lives in the light (in spite of the reality that there is still much to be done).