Yoga Symbols

The study of Yoga symbols is an ancient science created centuries ago to carry health, peace of mind, and happiness to people who have learned it. There is a wide collection of yoga symbols that are being used these days. In ancient times, holy men called "rishis", watched birds, animals, and other creatures, as well as plants, to develop asanas, movements, and postures. Asanas was the Sanskrit name for positions in yoga, and as new asanas were created, so were the forming of yoga symbols that resembled these creatures.

A lot of these asanas or positions in yoga were named after the plants and animals that they be similar to, these included Bakasana, Matsyasana, Shalabhasana, Simhasana, Vatayasana, Padmasana, and Suryasana. In the body's delicate characteristic, complex symbolisms are applied to portray the cakras. The cakras is known to be the energy of whirling motions, which are symbolized as lotuses. Every cakra contains a particular number of color, petals, presiding god, and geometric shape.

Sanskrit letters are etched on petals of lotuses, symbolizing cosmic energy through exposed word. The walls of Yoga ashrams, which are usually secluded places of residence for a guru and its religious community, have huge cakras paintings with all its symbols. Among the most common yoga symbols found on these paintings are the Hatha Yoga, which is that of sun and moon. Paintings also show a spine called yogadanda, symbolizing the staff of God, with a serpent curled at the spine's base called kundalini. And finally, the sun and moon symbols are used for the main nadis, channeling the prana to stream to the body's lower and upper parts.

Different schools of yoga use dissimilar yoga symbols that more closely relates to the element of yoga style they are concentrated on. Goddesses and Hindu gods are normally placed in ashrams. Om is the most extensively used yoga symbols, whose name originated from Sanskrit and is the ancient sound through which earth was created; a very comparable concept to the Logos of the Greek.

Om represents expansion or unfolding, wherein if uttered, starts within the lungs and ends with the lips. The Om is represented on glyph called omkar, and has four parts that each represents four states of awareness: the deep sleep state, the material state or ordinary waking, the dream state, and the awakened state or absolute conscience.

The yoga symbols play a special part in yoga as they are the basis of static exercise that stimulates not merely physical fitness but energy harmonization as well.