Tuck your shoulder blades gently in toward the spine to open Yoga key west the front of the chest. Make sure that your neck is long and your chin and Yoga key west forehead are level. Then guide your attention through your whole body systematically from head to toe and back again, letting each part relax deeply. Do not fret if your mind produces thoughts; just watch them unemotionally without jumping into the content. Be a compassionate witness. You might notice yourself reviewing an event, thinking of a person, making a plan. Try not to follow the pull of the thoughts, but passively observe them come and go. Trust in the process of letting go.
Summary
When we trace the genealogy of a notion and a discourse, like yoga, back in time it is common that the further back we get the more the word transforms its meaning and becomes cloudy and unclear, until it entirely disappears. This also happened in the case of the yoga sign. However by applying a proto-definition (a working definition) of yoga, as it emerged, I believe we can trace three principles, which as they came together constructed proto-yoga-forms. As the (proto-yoga)-practices emerged among the early-Sramanas ( the proto-yogis’ who seem primarily to be found among the Jains), these groups might or might not have had a word for their discourse and practice of ascetic-meditative self-mortification leading to release. So as we don’t know if these practices were called yoga’, I have termed them protoyoga.
The earliest forms of proto-yoga surfaced as ascetic self-mortification was combined with emerging Axial Age discourses on karma and moksha. The Sramanas turned this into a profession and a cultural field. This social stratum developed a range of new ascetic meditative practices forming a tight part of an Axial Age ethical lifestyle. This cultural field probably evolved out of suicide rituals – the institution of proper dying.
