Bountiful, Blissful and Beautiful

Bountiful, Blissful and Beautiful
By Mehtab, Founder YOGA YOGA

"When you do yoga," my teacher Yogi Bhajan once said, "three things happen. You become bountiful, blissful, and beautiful."

Blissful I understood. The sensation after a great yoga class can only be described as bliss. Bountiful took a little longer until I realized that yoga gives you the greatest gift you can ever have, your own radiant health.

But beautiful was a problem. Me beautiful?

Like most people, my idea of beauty was so corrupted by pictures of supermodels and advertising that doing yoga to become "beautiful" seemed, well, not very yogic.

Yet the most beautiful people I know are the people who come to Yoga Yoga. So Yogi Bhajan must be right. What is it about yoga that creates beauty?

In one of the most ancient texts written about yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika which dates back many centuries states:

"Success in Yoga is displayed when the body becomes light and glows." (II, 19)

This glowing inner lightness is the source of all beauty that is often counterfeited with cosmetics, fashions, and artifice. My word for the beauty that yoga creates is "sparkle."

Have you seen people whose eyes sparkle? There is a quality of light so strong about them that it seems to come from their pores. Yoga makes you sparkle because it detoxifies the body on all levels.

Poor health, emotional turmoil, and spiritual depression that create the ugliness and darkness that hide our inner beauty are dispelled by the practice of yoga. People who do yoga become beautiful regardless of any cultural standard you may apply because they are tapping into the source of eternal beauty, the soul itself.

Using yoga to become beautiful is not superficial. It is a validation of the true practice of yoga. Before Botox and Tummy Tucks and Brazillian Waxes, there existed an ancient system of yoga called Avatara Yoga.

Avatara Yoga, which is a branch of Hatha Yoga, uses techniques to delay physical aging and to acquire a supple body, smooth skin, as well as "graceful movement and serenity and beauty of expression." It is based on yogic diet, pranayama practices, inverted poses, increased arterial flow to the face and neck, as well as a overall revitalization of the glandular system and simple lifestyle suggestions (like going to bed early twice a week).

Yogi Bhajan shared many of these Avatara Yoga techniques in his teachings on Kundalini Yoga and now there are also books and workshops specifically on this once "secret" science.

But now the secret is out. Just do yoga everyday and let your friends tell you how beautiful you are. And blissful. And bountiful.