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“The reason Yoga therapy is so effective in both preventive medicine and in assisting conventional treatment methods is because Yoga addresses all three aspects of wellness—physical, mental and spiritual.”49 This sums up the opinion of serious practitioners and students of yoga—yoga encompasses the art of self-realization, self-transformation, and self-healing.

Patanjali compiled the tools for such profound transformation in 300 CE in what is called “Ashtanga Yoga,”50 or the eight limbs of yoga. This first, most translated and commented-on classic Indian text, which organized and synthesized yoga—Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras Darshana—provides the roadmap to healing and spiritual transformation. The collection of 196 short aphorisms outlines the tools and results of practicing them, of which spiritual transformation is at the core. The Sutras clearly explain the process and practical methods of raising levels of awareness, gaining deeper wisdom, exploring the potential of the mind, and eventually going beyond the mind. If this is not spirituality, then I do not know what is… Sadly this has sometimes either been either ignored or misunderstood by the growing population of contemporary young yoga teachers and yoga therapists.