Every Activity Is Yoga

If we focus on the work instead of the results, it becomes yoga From a Parisamvada by Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra

- Dr. Jayadeva Yogendra

The simple concept in yoga is that all activities, whatever they may be, can help us in our highest development. Every activity is a kind of yoga. It could be cooking, it could be eating. The activity is just an excuse. The important thing is the attitude you bring to an activity. Usually, we bring in a lot of desires, “I” sense, and tension. And to that extent, activities do not help us. They create problems.

What we really have to learn in yoga is to see that we are totally into that activity without bringing in the “I” sense, the desires, and the over-anxiety about the results. Basically, it would require trust; trust that there is a larger order, that there is a meaning, that there is a purpose, that we are a part of that larger process. This thinking is at the base. If we are uncertain, if we doubt, if we overthink, we cannot carry out any activity in the correct fashion.

There is a story in Jain literature of two princes who went into the jungle and found two beautiful eggs. They brought the eggs home. One prince put one egg for incubation in the grass and left. After some days, he got a beautiful little peacock. The other prince also put his egg in the grass. But every now and then he would go, take the egg out, check whether it was all right, and put it back again in the grass. He got nothing.