Just like the importance vitamins have on our daily nutritional practices and health, vitamins are also essential to the practice of yoga. Yoga has 5 “vitamins” that nourish the soul. They include Sraddha, Virya, Smrti, Samadhi and Prajna. Sraddha, which means faith, teaches the student of yoga to build trust and confidence which lend to the ability to practice true faith. This vitamin helps the yogi to approach life with a firm conviction, positive attitude and acceptance. This vitamin allows for the sweet hope necessary for a practice steeped in true faith. Virya is most commonly referred to as the vitamin of spiritual energy and soul vitality. This vitamin erupts from the positive feelings associated with doing the right thing and staying on your true path. Sometimes characterized as the soul vitamin of courage, this dose will give you the strong will needed to practice intentness and face life with the stamina and dedication required to fight the good fight. Smirti is the third Yoga vitamin that represents mindfulness and intentness. Minding your body, mind and soul are palpable aspects of the life experience that are nourished by vitamin smrti. Memory is associated with smirti as it includes the recollection of what the yogi has studied and continues to study. Meditating on what the yogi learned and is learning increases the mindfulness and focus essential to an expanded consciousness. This yoga vitamin is said to be essential to the practice of meditation and the prelude to transferring energy from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. This transfer of energy relaxes the body and reduces harmful hormone production such as cortisol. The seasoned yogi learns that with the presence of Smrti, intentness, the mind becomes free of all disturbances and harmony occurs. True harmony comes through the absorption of the yoga vitamin Smrti. The yoga vitamin Samadhi represents the togetherness of life and our perception of life and things as they truly are. This soul vitamin allows the yogi to actually see reality with a clear and nonjudgmental mind free of disturbances and harmonized. Samadhi is taught in classical yoga and is a highly technical concept the yogi takes time to learn. Ending with Prajna, the fifth soul vitamin taught to and learned by the yogi is the end goal of a yoga practice. This is the realization of true perception. This perception is the key to true knowledge. Not worldly knowledge, knowledge of the soul and of positive energy that expands and increases the mind and its capacity to unite the self with self. This knowledge truly unites the loose ends of one’s inner being with the true self.
