For thousands of years, yoga has been a tool to open the mind and body, bringing transformation. At its core, yoga is a process that involves confronting your limits and transcending them. It is a psychophysical approach to life and to self-understanding that can be creatively adapted to the needs of the times. Yoga transforms you by opening up the physical and mental binds that block your potential, limiting your life. Transformation is a process that brings newness and interest. You might think that changing deeply could make you so different that you’d lose touch with those you love and even yourself. Actually, the transformation that yoga brings makes you more yourself, and opens you up to loving with greater depth. It involves a honing and refining which releases your true essence, as a sculptor brings out the beauty of form in the stone by slowly and carefully chipping away the rest. Doing yoga brings many concrete benefits: it’s a powerful therapeutic tool for correcting physical and psychological problems; it retards aging and keeps you opened sexually; it
gives strength and flexibility for other physical activities; it can enhance your looks, posture, skin and muscle tone, and vitality; and it can give your life a sense of grace and overall well-being. At its deepest level, yoga involves generating energy. Energy is often thought of as a mysterious force which is either there
or not, and out of your control. But through yoga, you can actually change its quality and generate more of it, by enlarging the body’s capacity as an energy transformer. Everyone has experienced different qualities of energy. Sometimes “scattered” or agitated – you’re off in different directions at once. Yet, at other times, you may also have great energy and be very focused and calm. Yoga involves learning to generate energy, and also to focus it into different parts of your body. This enables you to break through physical and
psychological blocks, increasing energy, which allows new interest to come into your life. At any instant, the quality of your life is directly related to how interested you are in it. Yoga involves far more than either having or developing flexibility. Being able to do complicated postures doesn’t necessarily
mean you know how to do yoga. The essence of yoga is not attainments, but how awarely you work with your limits – wherever and whatever they may be. The important thing is not how far you get in any given pose, but how you approach the yogic process, which in turn is directly related to how your
mind views yoga.

Five Ways Swami Satchidananda Yoga Can Balance Your Life Article

Swami Satchidananda brought his brand of popular yoga to the United States in the Sixties. Half a century later, there are facilities all over the country that make his teachings and his practices available to millions of Americans searching for enlightenment and balance. With yoga, they find exactly that. In fact, yoga isn't just good for the body. It's good for the mind. There are many ways his practice and teachings can benefit interested parties today. You want to truly improve your life? Pick an area, and yoga can give you exactly what you need:
Family: With the healing peace of yoga, you can find calm in the relationships with those closest to you: your family. This yoga practice gives you time, peace, and energy to evaluate the bond you share with those around you, and helps direct your mind to ways you can improve upon that bond. Of the millions who have taken advantage of Swami Satchidananda's teachings over the years, this has been one area universally agreed upon as beneficial.
Relationships: Imagine not worrying about finding Mister or Missus Right. Imagine being at peace with who you are. Can you see how that could open you up to possibilities in your relationships with other people. You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends and lovers. Swami Satchidananda yoga helps you to pick these things wisely by placing you in a position where you can be at peace with yourself and what you hope to gain from outer relationships.
Religion: Who created us? What happens to us when we die? What should I believe? What should I condemn? Traditional religion is plagued with questions that bring judgment and doubt. Yoga is not a practice for absolutes. It doesn't focus on who's right and who's wrong and what must be done about it. It focuses on you. It does not condemn your faith, nor uphold it. It simply helps you find peace with what you believe and what your purpose is in this world.
Self Improvement: Swami Satchidananda yoga has so many benefits for the mind, but it helps the body, too. Improve the way you look and feel with yoga strategies that challenge your body even while making it stronger and more effective. Health and wellness is as much physical as it is mental, and yoga understands this.
Lifestyles: Eat better. Live better. Yoga teaches you to treat your body and mind as a temple.
Satchidananda and his yoga teachings and practices seek to include every person and every belief. It's the perfect complement to who you are and what you hope to achieve from life. Give your body and mind what it needs with yoga, and wake up to a better you.

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How does yoga transform people? And why?

Any passionate yoga teacher or student will tell you that yoga changes lives—again and again—regardless of whether they’re from a school of Bhakti Yoga (yoga of devotion) or a school of Yoga Asana (yoga postures).
Yoga, as a spiritual practice, has been around for thousands of years, while yoga as a physical practice has really only been widely practiced for the past century or so. But how does yoga transform people?
And why?
If you ask the Kundalini Yogis, they’ll tell you that when the nadis (internal energies) align, positive change is inevitable. If you ask the Ashtanga Yogis, they’ll tell you that physical practice cleanses the nerves and everything reveals itself in a natural progression.
So who is right?
The answer is simple: everyone! The real power of yoga is not in the outward form or the school of yoga (though no doubt some are more effective than others). The REAL power of yoga is that yoga itself is a system based almost exclusively on disciplined practice with just a skeleton structure of theory.
Here’s where this gets interesting…
You already know about the power of the mind, the power of thought and intention; but the challenge we face daily is that it’s infinitely more difficult to use your mind to change your mind than it is to use systematic and disciplined actions to do the same.
Whether you’re reciting the Yoga Sutras or practicing a handstand, this constant and continuous discipline is what gives such tremendous, visceral benefits; therefore, there’s no need to get caught up in the names and labels of yoga. Simply find a practice you love—and do it!
While religion is personal belief system that you may or might not subscribe to, yoga is a system of spiritual practices that is truly for everyone. So if you do your practice, whatever it is, positive change is inevitable.

Source: http://evolutionezine.com