A fitness routine based on aesthetics feeds your ego, not your spirit. By increasing your ego, you actually become more vulnerable, more susceptible to the everyday occurrences that are out of your control. By feeding your ego, you ignore what you truly need in order to create something your ego desires. Consequently, you end up working against yourself and your goal of health. You actually create more imbalance.
Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga by is directed at creating the highest level of energy, vitality and freedom. The only way to do this is to work with yourself, not against yourself.
By working hard sensitively, we create a healing environment that honors each individual, an environment that respects our boundaries and works within him or her. In this way, we create an atmosphere conducive to natural expansion and growth. We’re not interested in pushing past our edge to get to a place where we’ve been brainwashed into thinking we need to be in order to have happiness!
Harmony, Serenity, Acceptance, Love
Our Power Yoga online yoga classes and yoga workouts exist as an opportunity to develop our foundation in serenity, acceptance, and love. All harmony has to begin inside of us before it can spread all around us. Like a flame starts with internal combustion, then shines light and spreads warmth all around – and what can be better benefits of yoga than developing things like harmony, serenity, acceptance, and love?
As one’s internal reality (consciousness) starts to shift, only then will the outer skin begin to shine, the eyes to glisten, and the social fabric of our surroundings heal.
Egotistical gratification, in the form of body shape or material gain, simply facilitates dysfunction because one does not need to be loving and accepting of one’s self to succeed. Therefore, love and acceptance of others is unlikely and the environment we live is perpetuated – this is not anti-affluence, it is pro-consciousness.
We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world with some of the world’s wealthiest people living in our country. Yet, pain and suffering in the forms of loneliness, fear, anger, disease, crime, poverty, war, and pollution are all too prevalent. It’s time to realign our priorities! The lessons of modern society and the Industrial Age are flooding in and they are Wrong Way, Not a Through Street, and Dead End. Can’t we read the signs? This is not anti-technology, this is pro-human, pro-Earth, and pro-love.
If you think it’s hard to open up, to let go, to quiet down, to feel, or to practice yoga, then try living your whole life without it.
There is no “Best Yoga” – There is only the “Best Yoga for you”
On the physical side of things, health is a state of balance. This is my body, my tool, my clay. The original function of exercise was to heal or maintain health. It wasn’t about looking good so much as feeling good. Now, most exercises have nothing to do with healing and everything to do with looking good, creating even more dis-ease or imbalance by overdeveloping the outer muscles and ignoring the rest. Even the best online yoga exercises and poses themselves, created to give fast and extreme results, can be damaging.
Yoga is about balance because health is a state of balance. The practice of yoga is the practice of cultivating balance. That balance is mental as well as physical because they go hand in hand. For example, the largest cause of premature death from disease in our country is heart disease, and some studies indicate that largest contributor to heart disease is stress. Isn’t it interesting that the most prevalent physical ailment is linked to our mental state? You can do all the yoga workouts you want, but if you don’t deal with your mental state then physical exercises aren’t going to be very helpful. The point being, if being healthy is really your objective, working on your mental state might be more important that the physical. A yoga practice provides for such work, and our online yoga classes should be allowing us to do just that!
A sharp mind for a better body
The fact is, we’re all different: different faces, shapes, sizes, personalities, etc… We all shouldn’t have and can’t have the same bodies, therefore yoga will never be the same for any of us.
Our life experiences and genetic dispositions make us different. Real health and vitality comes when we stop comparing and competing with each other, and start listening to the voice within that tells us what we need. We don’t need to have the “best body”; we need to have our own body. By turning off the controlling mind, we can finally listen to the innate wisdom that waits to be heard.
The sad state of this planet is a prime example of how we’ve stopped listening. Our egos and intellects have gotten so big we’ve become enamored with ourselves and our capabilities. Our great societies, with all their cities and technological advances, are monuments to the seemingly unfailing prowess of the intellect. But the fact is, our intellect is only a small fraction of our intelligence. By shutting down our other faculties in favor of the intellect, we move away from our natural balance. Hence, the state of our people and planet.
Picture a web, with all its strands interconnected and sharing its burden. What’s happened to us is, all the weight on the web has been placed on a single strand: the intellect. And we can’t survive on intellect alone. The web that holds us together, as humans and as a planet, is ripping apart! The cause is intellect ruled by the ego, which creates a very scary level of self-indulgence. This is a no-holds-barred self-indulgence in which almost everything else is forsaken. And this is planet earth, Twenty-First century style!
To heal our planet, we need to heal ourselves because we are the source of the imbalance. We need to quiet down, stop thinking, stop controlling, and start listening. Our bodies are the natural world, even as we live in an unnatural environment. If we quiet down and listen to what our bodies need (instead of telling it), then we can feed ourselves naturally and properly and become more in harmony with the natural world. All our activities and endeavors will resonate with this harmony and we, as well as our planet, can begin to heal. No longer will our actions be governed by ego or intellect; they’ll be guided by the deeper wisdom within. We can then use the intellect as it was meant to be used: to help us shape the wisdom coming through.
Benefits of Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga Classes
Follow Bryan and the Power Yoga community to hear his thoughts on how to stay your healthiest, tips on eating right, how to meditate, the best online yoga classes, what are the best types of yoga for ultimate well-being, and why yoga is more than just a full-body workout!
Looking for the best yoga retreats, top online yoga classes or types of yoga to help you develop or deepen your yoga practice? Learn more about Bryan Kest and Power Yoga as he travels around the globe to share over 35+ years of yoga experience, teaching yoga classes, yoga teacher trainings, retreats and workshops along the way.
