There "ain't nothin' wrong with yoga"... but the real question is whether it goes far enough.

Yoga is great for stretching your muscles and increasing your flexibility. It's a wonderful remedy for back pain, as study after study keeps demonstrating. There are too many benefits to mention them all. But will yoga bring you to samadhi or spiritual enlightenment?

Hardly.

Here's the scoop. Yes, yoga is fantastic. So is Pilates. So are the flexibility exercises of Scott Sonnon, which can lead you to becoming even more flexible than a yoga guru in 1-2 years time. Bodywork is also great, and so are the soft martial arts, but none of these things will totally open up your chi channels.

Hence, no real spiritual progress.

When you open up your chi channels and cultivate your chi, that flooding of chi throughout your body softens your tissues and leads to real flexibility. It also leads to better health,  longevity and REAL meditation progress. If you want to see someone who is soft and flexible, go find a master who has meditated correctly for several years and you'll understand what the softening of chi can do for your body. It can change your blood, chi channels, flesh, bone marrow, tendons, bones, air and reshape your entire body so that it looks like those beautiful statues of male and female Buddhas you find in Asia.

Meditation is that something extra, in particular emptiness meditation, which is why all the sages and spiritual schools emphasize it. It's the cure for health problems (chi passing through an are will tend to cure it), longevity (if you cultivate your chi you are cultivating your life force, hence longevity), and spiritual progress (because chi and consciousness are linked, and purified chi means a more purified or spiritual consciousness).

So how do you make yoga more effective for the spiritual path? By combining it with breathing practices geared toward opening up your chi channels, and with meditation. Don't practice yoga WITHOUT also practicing meditation and breathwork. Otherwise you're leaving money on the table -- millions of dollars, so-to-speak.

I have met countless yoga teachers, from India no less, who have extremely flexible bodies and "no chi" whatsoever. Why? Because yoga was all physical form to them rather than a means of spiritual cultivation. They didn't practice meditation and they had no clue that they want to be opening up their chi channels. Some of them even had "dirty chi" just like martial artists who don't know how to cultivate emptiness.

Now if you combine yoga with breathing methods and meditation, you're on your way, but if you don't then it's just another physical exercise that leads to decline.

So remember, if you are going to practice yoga, try to combine it with breathing practices and meditation. Otherwise you're getting very little of the maximum benefits available. The 9-bottled wind breathing practice will open up your chi channels and as to meditation, there are so many options available on the website.

Meditation for Beautiful Skin  has a bunch of meditations and exercises you can try.

(I do NOT endorse this ebook purchase!!..Sheena)