What is karma yoga? How can karma yoga help you balance the karma in your life?
Karma yoga is a spiritual practice meant to reorient your mindset; by practicing karma yoga, you can develop a deeper connection to and harmony with the universe. Developing your understanding of how this works can grow your own spiritual practice.
Here are some ways that karma yoga can help you release karma in your life.
Practicing Karma Yoga
You can also release your karma by working through your allotted karma one life at a time. One tool that can help work through your allotted karma is karma yoga. What is karma yoga? To put it simply, karma yoga is a spiritual path defined by selfless action and service. Karma yoga is about seeing one’s life and work as a form of worship or offering, rather than a means to an end. Karma yoga is about the attitude and spirit with which you approach life, rather than simply acts of service. When you approach life as a gift, you act without attachment to self, allowing you to live more freely, in harmony with the universe, fostering a deeper connection to everything around you.
(Shortform note: While many people in the West are familiar with yoga as a form of physical exercise, the ancient Indian tradition of yoga is more nuanced and complex. According to the Indian Ministry of Internal Affairs, yoga can be defined as a spiritual discipline rooted in the subtle science of creating harmony between mind and body. The term “yoga” stems from the Sanskrit root “Yuj,” denoting “to join,” “to yoke,” or “to unite,” and the practice of yoga is considered a path toward the unity of individual consciousness with universal consciousness, symbolizing a perfect harmony between mind, body, and nature.)
Here, we will outline how you can use karma yoga to work through your allotted karma on three levels—the physical, the mental, and the energetic.
Release Karma on the Physical Level
Practicing karma yoga at the physical level can enhance your physical health and help your body work through your allotted karma.
One way to do this is to practice hatha yoga, a form of yoga that involves specific postures and breathing techniques that balance the body and mind. Through particular poses and exercises, hatha yoga can help erase entrenched patterns and memories that make up your accumulated karma and can prevent the accumulation of new karma.
Release Karma on the Mental Level
The next step in your journey is freeing yourself from mental karma. We’re tied to our past and future, and thereby lose our freedom in the present moment. To release mental karma, you must first understand the nature of how we perceive time. By shifting your perception of time, you gain the ability to let go of past burdens and future expectations, giving you the ability to respond to the present moment with a fresh perspective, uncolored by past prejudices or future anxieties.
Time is commonly perceived in three dimensions: the past, present, and future. To practice karma yoga on the mental level, you must accept that only the present is genuinely real, the past is nothing more than a collection of memories, and the future is merely a construct of our imagination. Often, our conditioning, our karma, prevents us from fully accepting the present as it is. To transcend this karma, it is crucial to embrace reality as it exists, without imposing our desires or wishes upon it.
Release Karma on the Energetic Level
The importance of engaging with karma is not just on the physical and mental levels, but also on the energetic level. While our physical and mental strength may deteriorate as we age, our energy doesn’t operate under the same constraints. When cultivated and cared for through practices like karma yoga, our energy can remain vibrant and youthful throughout our lives.
One tool to help work through karma at an energetic level is kriya yoga, an ancient yogic discipline focusing on accelerating spiritual growth through specific techniques. These techniques involve a mix of breath, sound, and focus, aimed at reorganizing the internal energy system. Kriya yoga focuses on inner transformation with the goal of recognizing one’s true nature beyond the confines of body and mind.
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Here's what you'll find in our full Karma summary:
- Yogi Sadhguru's guide to understanding and living by karma
- The four types of karma and how they impact you
- Strategies for those who wish to release themselves from the cycle of karma
