In our so called 'Wild' West culture and it's adaptation of the Eastern Yoga, one find that Yoga practices are mostly classified as an exercise, proliferated into many shopping malls in the format of franchise spaces as a stretching & fitness activity.
The misleading concept of 'looking great' (which is not a problem at all) and mostly a showing off attitude driven by the ego, is an attitude which places the inner work as a secondary option.
Without the complete correct preparation rather than benefits, yoga postures can also violates the body.
Yoga practices in this one hour session culture, after working hours, before meeting up for a drink environment, without meditation, is not the true yoga, and it is far from it's roots which is to mainly and primarily to cultivate the inner nature where the outward appearances is simply a consequence of inner cultivation.
Oneself inner dimension - looking at one's body perspective - is the medium who connects one to the higher potential and as the figurative aspects of a temple, one must also enters the 'body temple' to discover the intrinsically stages associated with the body mind cultivation.
The stage where the prana (the ethereal) manifests, is as such as, walking within the body where the turtle represents symbolic one of the stages of inner development as it is portrait in India in the West state of Maharashtra at Saptashrungi, a Devi Temple where a turtle sculpture means the preliminary stages of self discovery.
At Saptashrungi Devi Temple, to look at Kurma - the sculpture of a turtle - means to contemplate the inner self, where hidden inner disturbances, the hidden aspects of the ego, needs to 'liberate' itself from it's 'shell', and the symbolic portrait of the turtle shell is the representation to 'get out' of one shell as an inner cultivation process that witness the identification of one mind.
The turtle, an old reptile that lives under water as well as in the dry lands, represents detachment in yoga
A yogi when practice yoga in meditation, liberates himself/and or herself from the realm of the mind which covers, hides its true self like the turtle shell.
Another interesting symbolism of the turtle in Yoga is that the turtle hatches its eggs in a peculiar way. The turtle does not sit on top of the eggs to hatch them as most omnivorous does but focuses the attention by constantly looking at them.
In Yoga contemplation, rather than only the postures, it is within the postures that one also focus the attention of the higher self towards everything which is transient and similarly, one's expected to withdraw one senses as if hatching eggs in a turtle's way by looking at it (the transient nature of the mind) in the present moment of practice, free from past and future, until the realization of the Higher Self flourish like a lotus flower above the mud of a mind full of doubt, ghosts and often fear.
Yet another interesting application of the turtle symbolism is at Fukusai-ji Temple in Nagasaki - Japan.
The turtle shape of the new temple was determined by the temple’s new role as shell, a tribute for the Japanese soldiers who died during the World War II.
Also in the Bhagavad Gita - the 700 verse Hindu scripture in Sanskrit that is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata - Lord Krishna says in one of it's verses:
'One who is able to withdraw his senses from sense objects, as the turtle draws its limbs within the shell, is firmly fixed in perfect consciousness...'
Drawing in, or getting out - through Yoga and the symbolism of the turtle - our ancient reptile friend and it's amazing shell, it has since ancient times as well as this present moment, assisted us symbolically, about the cultivation of one's inner nature.