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Discipline leads to perfection

Yoga in Daily Life is the discipline of integrating practice into every moment. Patañjali teaches that yoga requires daily discipline to achieve perfection. This discipline applies to nourishment, sleep, walking, and speaking. In speaking, do not assume you are the better speaker and interrupt; listen fully. In practice, maintain a fixed time for your mantra, as the divine attention awaits you at that appointed hour. God is awake while we sleep; this is not love. Our daily rhythm is crucial; disrupting it turns off the body's biorhythm. The name signifies practicing yoga within everyday duties. The system has four principles: body warming, dynamic movements synchronized with breath, stretching, and then holding the posture to become a true āsana. This is not contrary to other systems but follows Patañjali. Practice every day. Support the body with ghee for the joints and with prāṇāyāma. The practice is neutral and for all.

"Patañjali said yoga requires discipline. Discipline leads to perfection."

"God is awakened, and we are sleeping. That is not love."

Filming location: Vienna, Austria

We are all practitioners of Yoga in Daily Life. Yoga is yoga. The second part of our practice is "daily life." It is a very neutral, very good field for practice. Yet, we always return to Patañjali, and every other master says the same thing: practice every day. Patañjali said yoga requires discipline. Discipline leads to perfection. Without discipline, you will not achieve your goal. It is not about beginning tomorrow, but making an inner saṅkalpa right now: "I will follow the discipline." Discipline in nourishment, in the quantity of food, the limitation of sleeping, walking, and speaking. In speaking, there are different principles. When someone else is talking, you should not take their words. We may think we are the better speaker, but how do you know the person who is speaking? How will they conclude their talk? What is in their mind? There may be words we do not understand. That is also a discipline. We may know we speak better than the other speaker, but still, it is not disciplined to act on that assumption. Similarly, in our sādhanā, practicing our mantra discipline—we call it niyam. Niyam and discipline are the same. Practicing our mantra niyam means doing it at a fixed time, not just whenever we feel like it. For example, today is Sunday; I sleep and think I will do the mantra at 10 o'clock, but that time has passed. The sun rises every day at its appointed time. Do not think, "Okay, I will do it in the evening." This is not discipline; it is outside of time. We should keep to the hour we decided upon every day. At that time, the concentration of blessings or attention from Gurudev, Mahāprabhujī, Gurujī, Devapurī, Alagapurī—they know that this Bhakta has this time, and they must give their attention. Mahāprabhujī is waiting and waiting. You should practice every morning at 6 or 5 o'clock. Mahāprabhujī is sitting, and you are sleeping and sleeping. It is said: Prabhu jagat hai aur tū sābat hai. God is awakened, and we are sleeping. What a kind of love that is! So, God is awakened and we are sleeping. That is not love. If we want achievement or success, we must keep our time for that. At this time, the divine will wait for you, and the program will be fulfilled. That is the anuśāsana. And so, the name "Yoga in Daily Life"—yoga is only that. If you do Bhujaṅgāsana in a different way, it is still called Bhujaṅgāsana. But not if you do it at that time, and this time, and that time. We have a rhythm. If we disrupt it, the whole biorhythm in the body is turned off. Soon, our daylight saving time will come. We will suddenly sleep an hour longer, but the whole of nature is leading. The birds, and especially the animals, are fed, and so on. It is like jetlag. They also need 14 or 15 days to return to normal. For some, like milking cows, their time does not end. It was five minutes, slowly. So, five minutes is okay. We are in a hurry to go to the toilet, but someone else is in there. Good, we can wait five minutes or so sometimes. But rhythm and habit—when you go for a walk with your dog and you take the leash in your hand, the dog is already in a hurry. If you wait three, four, or five minutes longer, he will jump around. This is our daily rhythm. This is very important: yoga in everyday life. This is what we call Yoga in Daily Life. It may be that one day we do a few exercises less because we have another duty. Okay, but in this duty, you can continue to practice your mantra. Mukhmeraṁ hatme kaṁ. In our hands, we have work, but in our mouth, we have the name of God and our mantra. While you are driving, you can repeat your mantra. Be aware of that. You do not have to close your eyes. When you sit on the train, or wherever you are, at this time of day, do not forget your mantra. So, by exception, sometimes we can only practice it spiritually, and physically we have to do something else. So, svādhyāya, sādhanā—when we open ourselves, there is indiscipline in the chait (consciousness). When we get up between half past six and seven, every day when we are having breakfast from 6:30 to 7 in the morning, we already feel hungry at six o'clock and are preparing breakfast. That is kṣapā. It was kṣapā—the body asking us to do this nitya karma. This argument, the nitya karma—karma means to do something—so our nitya karma: you get up, what are you doing? In the morning, when you get up, this you should do. That is why, personally, I put my Gurujī’s picture on that side so that when I open my eyes, I first see Gurujī, Mahāprabhujī, and also my altar. You can see your mother’s photo, your father’s photo, something you cherish. When you open your eyes, and sometimes you know, when a child opens its eyes and the mother is not there, the child begins to cry. If the mother is there, it is okay; the child is happy. So it is with rhythm. We are the child, ever. We are ever a child because God is the great one. God is our father. God is our mother, and God is this way. And then, where are you going? When you wake up, get out of the bed, and so on and so forth. This is called nitya kārya. In nitya kārya, you go to the bathroom, wash your face, wash your mouth, etc. Or you go to wash yourself, brush your teeth, etc. This is called Nitya Karma. After that, you make Agarbhaṭī or Ghībhaṭī. If you are religious, a believer, you should do this. Then you perform your pūjā, etc., and then you make chai for yourself, or coffee, or milk, or whatever, and then you eat, drink, and then you do something. So this is called Nityakāram, and Nityakāram is very, very important. We have Tamas Guṇa because we are sleeping, and now we have a lot of Tamas Guṇa. We can remove the Tamas Guṇa with water. This water element is very important in the morning. You come to the bathroom, open the water, and touch it with your hands. How beautiful a feeling it is when the water comes into your hands. How beautiful it is. Tomorrow, do it consciously. Be aware of that. The water comes into your hands, flows over your hands, and then you put water on your eyes. Suddenly, we are awakened. Water—thanks to God. When you can feel the water, you take it and clean your mouth. Purification takes place. Then we are brushing our teeth, cleaning our tongue. Everything. Then we can take a shower. That is best immediately; that tamas guṇa is gone. Awakening in the body, awakening. Normally, one should wake up before sunrise, but you can get up earlier. You do your mālās and something. If you are tired afterwards, you can sleep again after sunrise, okay? You can again, but try to take the opportunity. The time of sunrise has special energy for our body. How many creatures wake up when the sun rises? All creatures? Some tāmasic creatures are the negative creatures that kill in the night, hunt in the darkness, and they are afraid of the light, so they hide themselves somewhere in the darkness. But generally, naturally, all creatures are awakened. We have a beautiful song. In my time, we were walking twice a year through the village and singing a song before sunrise. The whole school of boys walked from street to street. These were the two independent days. There is a nice song: "O Traveller, Wake Up. Now is the time to wake up, not time for sleeping." It is a nice song like that. In that way, the song is this: God is awakened, and you are sleeping. What a way of love for God. So God was here, but you were sleeping. So, nitya kāryaṁ—we have to learn nitya kāryaṁ. What are you doing automatically in 24 hours for your body? That is nityakāram. Everything is nityakāram: to go to the toilet, to urinate, etc. This is also nityakāram—cleaning inwardly and outwardly. So many yogīs follow that time, and then the whole body gets this rhythm. At that time, everything is asking you to go, asking you to do it, asking you to get up, asking you to clean your mouth, asking you to clean your body. The body is asking us to do it, our inner self, and we do it. We like it; we feel better. This is a harmony and oneness with our body, our mind, and our feelings. After all this, we gave the name to our yoga system: Yoga in Daily Life. So, nitya kāram—everyday duties, what we do, our system—Yoga in Daily Life. We have three different kinds of techniques which we should do. First is called body warming. Body warming means warming our muscles, our ligaments, and our blood circulation; otherwise, we will harm our body. We will harm our muscles, so you have to warm them. When you see champions, when they are going to compete, they are moving their hands and legs, warming up. This is the same thing in yoga. It is called body warming. There is one name in Hindi I have forgotten, but it has the same meaning: body warming. After body warming, the second technique is called dynamic movement. This means that when you bend forward, the next pose should be bending to the back. If you twist to the right side, then the other side. So, dynamic movements. The third one is called the postures. In dynamic movements, we are doing the stretching. If we try to do a stretching posture without having done body warming and dynamic movement, then stretching can harm our muscles and ligaments. So: body warming, dynamic movements, body stretching, and now comes the yoga posture where you can remain longer. That means you now get the benefit of your āsanas, your practice. These are the four principles of Yoga in Daily Life: body warming, dynamic movements (where there has to be control or observation of the breath, so movements and breath at the same time), stretching, and then the posture. You will see; follow this for two weeks. You will enjoy and feel much better. That is yoga in daily life. After you are in one posture—for example, in Earth Machandrasana—you enjoy it, you feel you do not need to come back immediately. You stay in that posture. It means your body asks, "A little more, please, a little more," because you have prepared for this āsana. Then it is āsana. Otherwise, it is called yoga vyāyam, yoga exercises. But it is āsana. This exercise is the dough. So, exercise is the dynamic movement, body warming, and performing certain postures. But when we come to the āsana practice, then you can stay, but it is not that you are trembling because it is too long. No, you enjoy. Any posture: Sarvāṅgāsana, Bhujaṅgāsana, Dhanurāsana, Śīrṣāsana—many of these advanced āsanas. You feel so pleasant, and your body asks for something a little more. It is like someone massages you and you say, "Yes, please, a little more here." Or someone is itching here, and you say, "Please, can you scratch my back a little bit here? Oh, yes, good, a little more." So the entire body is asking—our breath, our circulation, our muscles, our joints—and we are recharging the energy. That is the system or specialty of Yoga in Daily Life. So, where yoga is yoga, it is only that yoga. But we call it "daily life," meaning everyday practicing. That is all. This is not contrary to some other system. It is the same, but we put it in Patañjali’s thoughts, and so it is Patañjali’s word, and our word is the same thing. But practicing every day—Yoga in Daily Life. You have to follow this, the bible of Yoga in Daily Life, and this is your master. Every yoga teacher must have this book in their hands when they go for teaching. Every posture is written: how to do it, how long, etc. Exactly everything is described. But if you do not follow this and you put new postures in between, then it is a little bit different. Of course, we can make some different movements within a posture. When we do the half butterfly, we can do it with both hands. Okay, no problem. You can do it with one hand. Okay, no problem. You can do it without hands. It is okay, no problem. Or you can bend forward and do it at the same time. So that is okay. It must not be rigid. If you have to do only like this now, then for me it is boring because it is already going down, oh, touching down. Someone has to do like this, like this, oh, because it is stiff. One day it will come that you can touch completely. It is going, so therefore we can bring different techniques into these postures, but they remain under this frame. Then we will enjoy, we will have success, we will know what yoga is really doing. Otherwise, we will not get that kind of safety in our body because we did not practice correctly. We will have joint pains because we did not practice properly. You should all—not too much, but a little—ghee is very important for our joints, and haldi (turmeric), of course. Yes, we need it, like in a car we have to put grease. So, if you did not eat that ghee, your joints are dry. They will rub out all your bones. So, eat ghee, please, but of course not a hundred grams at once. Once a week you can take a hundred grams, make something nice, churma, as we call it in India. I will tell you how to eat ghee. But if you eat only ghee and do nothing, then your liver will be coated with ghee. And extra to support our body is prāṇāyāma. Therefore, the prāṇa, the prāṇāyāma—we will do it tomorrow. So, this is the instruction again for you to remember why this system is called Yoga in Daily Life. Okay, do not say "yoga in daily life" if it disturbs you, but you can say, "Every day I practice." That is all. Practice every day if this name disturbs you. But this name is like that—not calling to a particular religion, particular philosophy, or particular culture. It is very fine, neutral, very good. So, do practice Yoga in Daily Life. Now, after this, many of you are waiting for nice, beautiful pictures from Alak Purī, Siddha Pīṭha, and Alak Purījī. When I went about one week ago, I was in Badrināth, Bhagavān Viṣṇu’s temple. There is a lot of spiritual discipline and many things. Many hundreds of thousands of people go every day. They have that devotion. How are they coming? How are they walking? They are not comfortable. There is nothing, but they do not care about comfort and cold. They want to see Bhagavān Viṣṇu’s statue, or Bhagavān Viṣṇu. Therefore, for them, it is not a statue; they mean Bhagavān itself. That is it. We were there. The head of this temple, and then there are many, many positions. One day when I asked about Ālagpurījī, to see the Pīṭha, they began to chant the mantras of Ālagpurījī from the Vedas, the Upaniṣads, and so on. So many, many. There I got so much knowledge, again information. So it is not a fairy tale. You could feel and see in all the mountains. Yes, Thalakpuri is present. It is about 12 kilometers long, and on the other side, I do not know how far it is touching—to the China side. All this is called Alakpurī, Alakpurījī’s glaciers. Kālidāsa survived writing about the capital of Alakpurījī. There are many, many rivers. We all were there. It was very nice. Of course, next year, in the beginning of September, we will make the journey again. Those who want to go should prepare, and you are welcome. We were 160 or 167, and 35 people were helping us—cooking, cleaning, putting up tents, this, that, everything. Some people had a little difficulty sleeping in a small tent for two or three people. But the luckiest one was the one who was in the middle, because it was a cult. So, heat from both sides of the body in a small tent. Of course, you are free to take your own tent and put it anywhere; that is okay. Then you are alone in the cold. It is cold; it can rain. It is not like we have a hotel or this and that. It is just like you are in the rocks and you want to put your tent, and there is a big stone you cannot take out. Then, where the big stone is, you should put it near the stomach so that it can go in and out. Also, walking slowly—the walk is 8 kilometers, not very far. It is very nice, but it is going up and down. Psychologically you think it is difficult, but just take it easy; then it is okay. When we came back, everybody was walking like anything, like what you call a ballerina. Yes, everyone was very nice. Myself also, but they always put me in one chariot. Okay. So, we will see some photos. I wish you all the best. Tomorrow morning, the prāṇa is coming, and with this also some āsanas. So, I hope that you understood who is a yoga teacher, who is not a yoga teacher, who is a first-time new practitioner, who are all practitioners. The explanation of Yoga in Daily Life is: yoga, that is all. But practice every day, that is all.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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