One way of looking at the practice of yoga is as a behavioral psychology. For most, changing our behavior is a major undertaking. New years resolutions are a result of both the desire for change is a natural part of living and that making meaningful change is difficult, if not it would not take resolution.

Yoga, as both a system of philosophy and of behavioral psychology, gives us a frame work for understanding this difficulty and a means of transcending this difficulty. While it is true that there are different schools of yoga tradition with radically different approaches, the aim is in many always the same, to remove the things that get in our way of experiencing directly what it means to be alive.

Now, to understand yoga in terms of an ultimate "self help" technique is to understate the purpose that yoga tradition has espoused. Nevertheless, the method remains the same. 

So what is this method?

First,  we have to understand the problem. According to Pattabhi Jois, the enemy of change is the inability to open the heart. He says that desire, anger, delusion, greed, envy and sloth become obsticals to this opening. According to Jois, these are the enemies of change. 

Michael Stone, in his book *the inner tradition of yoga*, explains the purpose of yoga as a path out of suffering, means of reducing the necessity to struggle through life by Learning to engage life with more flexibility and less rigidity. Yet, the exact difficulty is that these enemies of transformation become patterned within our very nature, and we build habits that keep us from breaking these patterns.

So how then do we change our these habits so that we can begin to find the kind of opening that Jois speaks about?

Habits are essentially the manifestation of various neurological pathways with in the brain that through repetition have become entrenched behaviors. While these habits may appear to be mental in nature, the mechanism is physical, located in the tissues of the brain. So, to change the habit we have to change the patterned processes within the brain itself. 

The various practices of yoga provide various means for this to occure. As mentioned earlier, the various yoga school or tradition may differ in approach, however, the purpose os the same. Whether it be through asana, mantra, meditation, prayer or other mindfulness technique, the desired result is the rewiring of the mind, the removal of these entrenched patterns that keep the heart from opening to the truly meaningful ways that nature presents itself.

For many the purpose of yoga is not so grand as finding and realizing the great truths of life. Many simply want to enjoy life more, to live in more meaningful ways. Nevertheless, the process that yoga puts forth is general in its application. Yoga is technology for transformating the behaviors that are obsticals to living deeply and meaningfully.