Many people, sensing a growing dissatisfaction with their lives ...or feeling trapped in an unrewarding job or relationship, have taken yoga classes to ease their mind and emotions, to soothe their spirit, and to firm-up their body ...and frequently their courage. In the beginning, they felt a renewed sense of peaceful energy, vitality, and meaningful purpose about themselves and their lives ...however, over time, as their job and personal relationship showed little improvement ...and their life remained somewhat the same, though they were obviously stronger, more-flexible, and somewhat relaxed, they were still tense about their lives ...and disillusioned with their job and relationship. In other words, though yoga had made little changes in their body and responses, everything else remained pretty much the same. It seems they had taken yoga classes as a way to "take charge of" their mind and body and life ...and, for a while, they did feel better and more-empowered, but, as they tried to change particular areas of their life ...and failed, their old thoughts and attitudes and reactions quickly returned, simply because their yoga, despite any claims of mind-body oneness, dealt with their body ...and somewhat with their mind~which was supposed to remain "quiet" or fully focused on breathing or another body functions~but left their essential beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, words, and actions unattended to, such that their old conflicts, dissatisfactions, and disillusionments quickly returned ...and frequently brought a sense of failure with them ...again.

     If you take yoga classes to acquire an empowering sense of peacefulness, then, though you probably don’t believe it, every moment of the class maintains your basic unpeacefulness, and if, through diverting your attention ...and relaxing and empowering your mind and body, you succeed in feeling a measure of peacefulness, because, in this, you are also maintaining and somewhat strengthening your unpeaceful beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, words, and actions, and have done little or nothing about these matters, they will quickly return as constant annoying feelings~whether at the surface of your self and life or deeply buried~and little will have been achieved.

     In such situations, to be successful, your yoga must work directly with your embodied beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, emotions, words, and actions ...not merely with your physical body, and must not carry on or reinforce false assumptions about life, such as duality, good/evil, superior/inferior things, matters being out-of-balance or out-of-harmony, cause and effect, loss of empowerment, unhappiness, appropriate/inappropriate energies, body malfunctions, the causes of ailments, or having to peacefully deal with the undesirable events of life which happen to you. These false assumptions alone are enough to create your sense of unpeaceful powerlessness, ...and if you don’t recognize this and deal with these false assumptions, all the yoga in the world will not help you surpass your problems and body pains ...or support you in living as you truly desire.