Liberation in Life -Yoga Is The Answer
There are different branches of yoga which can help you in your individual and social life. Yoga is a form of mental therapy. Asana, pranayama, ajapa japa, nada yoga and all the other practices of yoga help to rid the mind of the accumulated samskaras, the impressions and unconscious memories. Once these samskaras are removed, your neuroses, mental conflicts, complexes, frustrations and tensions also go. They are a legacy of psychological problems. Man identifies with the body and then becomes a victim of all sorts of psychological neuroses. Even when there is no external cause for neuroses, he creates them – fear of death, fear of ill health, fear of monetary loss. He imagines all sorts of foreboding situations and worries without rhyme or reason.
If you want to change your personality, to remove your mental complexes, then yoga is the answer. Liberation does not mean going into seclusion. Liberation means remaining steadfast where you are and overcoming your limitations. It means destroying the chains that bind you. It does not mean, as some imagine, going to some unknown region, high up in the sky, from which there is no rebirth. It belongs very much to the world. It is a matter of here and now.
If you cannot shake off the vasanas or deep-rooted desires which bind you in life, if you cannot overcome your personality deficiencies which are entrenched in your unconscious, how can you get happiness, bliss and liberation? Yoga will liberate you from the shackles that bind. Through yoga you can fathom your unconscious and remove layer after layer of the samskaras which hold you back and block your natural self-expression. When these samskaras are removed, the power and wisdom which lie dormant within you begin to manifest.
–Swami Satyananda Saraswati of Bihar School of Yoga [http://yogamag.net/archives/2006/ajan06/answer.shtml]
