The word ‘Yoga’ comes from the Sanskrit word “yuj” meaning to yoke, or unite and also can be translated as ‘harmony’. This implies harmonizing all aspects of the individual – body with mind and mind with soul – to achieve a happy, balanced and fulfilling life, and at the advanced stages of Yoga, a yogi can realize the universal consciousness, uniting the ‘self’ with the ‘supreme’.
Many people in the West know yoga as a form physical exercise, but in India, the country of its origin, yoga is a scientific system covering the vast arrays of the philosophy, psychology, mysticism, religion, music, literature, dance and other forms of arts.