Experienced Yoga practitioners often feel discouraged when a naturally gifted dancer, gymnast, or martial artist, performs an advanced asana with little effort. As I have mentioned before, there are people with elongated joint capsules and their extraordinary range of motion is a gift. You and I may have to work at it, but the many rewards of Yoga practice are still there.

Yoga consists of many facets, and Asanas, are just one of the many parts of Yoga. Many students who have extraordinary flexibility admit they struggle with another part of Yoga – such as: The student who just can’t calm down to meditate, balancing in asanas, Pranayama, Yogic Philosophy, and so on.

Unfortunately, I have seen many promising Yoga practitioners quit practicing Yoga, due to a competitive mind-set. Within their own minds – they were in competition with every student in the class and, possibly, their Yoga teacher too.

Remember that Yoga means “union.” In simple terms, we can say union of mind, body, and spirit. There are many more explanations about union, but that could be a separate article. There are also many branches of Yoga and, therefore, many types of union, but competition is far from union.

Competition enhances the ego, and the ego is just a part of your personality. The ego resists union for its own survival. The ego is our social mask and does not want to share anything.

Remember, the next time you start to feel envious of another student or teacher – that is not union. If anything, it will hold you back from union and many more valuable contributions that Yoga can make to your life.

© Copyright 2005 – Paul Jerard / Aura Publications

The full URL to a page comes in three parts: The domain name, the path to the file then the filename, and the QueryString. For example, take the URL http://www.example.com/example/page.asp?name=Bob. The three parts of this are:

The domain name: www.example.com
The path to the page: /example/page.asp
The QueryString: name=Bob

So how do you find it all out with your own scripts? Well the following code should do it:
<%@language="VBScript"%>
<%
Dim strDomain, strPath, strQueryString, strURL
‘ find out the domain:
strDomain = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_HOST")
‘ find out the path to the current file:
strPath = Request.ServerVariables("URL")
‘ find out the QueryString:
strQueryString = Request.ServerVariables("QUERY_STRING")
‘ put it all together:
strURL = "http://" & strDomain & strPath & "?" & strQueryString
Response.Write "The current URL is: " & strURL
%>