Coming Home - Yoga Sutra II,4

When we practice yoga we are engaged in the process of coming home to ourselves, committing constantly to keep our life's focus on what really matters. 
What really matters is having a kind and forgiving outlook on life, both towards others and to ourselves.  What really matters is acting wisely and creating enough energy within to be able to be available when other people need us. 
The events of our lives - the story - is just the surface matter - in yoga we dive beyond that choppy ocean's surface into the deep and abiding stillness that we always find within.  It's inside that stillness that we discover that we are nothing but peace and love. 
More than this: when we plumb the depths of peace and love consistently in yoga practice, we discover that all of our responses and decisions begin to come from that place and that we cannot help but become more loving and peaceful people as a result, people who are slow to judge and quick to ask instead what we can offer.
Yoga brings us home to who we really are - not mothers, fathers, children, workers, lovers, friends, providers, or any of the other labels we could give ourselves - but just this: human beings living a short life and finding meaning in it through the giving and receiving of love, through an appreciation of beauty, through simplicity and kindness.
Patanjali told us thousands of years ago that our suffering comes from our forgetting that love and peace is who we really are.  He called it avidya, lack of understanding, or ignorance.  And he explained that the way through that wrong-thinking is to practice yoga
Samadhi bhavanarthah klesa tanukaranartascaThe practice of yoga reduces afflictions and leads to peace
Yoga is a simple practice; we use it to strip away the distractions that engross us; and then we set up camp within our hearts and live for it and from it, to the best of our ability and always.
Om shanti x