This has to be understood before we can derive the benefit that these special exercises are expected to bestow upon us. To understand how a physical exercise like this can become Yoga, you have to know the very background, rather the philosophy, behind these Asanas, the Yoga exercises. These Yoga-Asanas are based on a cosmology on which the whole Yoga system is rooted. Though you may look just as individuals who have performed a few physical feats, there is a relevance of these exercises to certain meanings which go beyond the visible form of the exercises. It would be proper if I mention to you in a few words what this cosmology is, though this is a vast subject on which great experts have written volumes.
Yoga holds that the universe is a complete organism, a wholeness by itself.
The so-called parts and isolated units in this universe are, to an extent, comparable to the parts or limbs of the human body, constituting a wholeness never independent of one another. We see varieties in this world making us believe that everything is different from everything else, in the same way as, with a narrow vision of certain parts of the body, we may think that the feet have no connection with the head, if our thought is limited only to the area of the feet and does not extend to the region of the head. If you see the body only through some blinkers, the whole organism of the body cannot become an object of perception. Then, naturally, we cannot see the connection between the legs and the head, for example, and if anyone instructs this narrow-minded individual on there being such a thing called relevance from the feet to the head, that would be a 'philosophy' for him, something which he cannot comprehend. He is instructed about that which he cannot see, and only told theoretically of there being a larger relevance inherent in the visible parts which are the immediate objects of perception.