The Yoga High !

This post is an article that I wrote on Yoga. It is kind of long, but I hope you have the patience to read it fully ! Here it flows :



Disclaimer: The author does not claim or expect to be treated as an expert on Yoga. The content of this article is purely based on the personal experiences that the author has had since he began practicing Yoga. Permission has been obtained from the source for quotes/information mentioned in this article.

Although Yoga means different things to different people, depending on what they have read, heard about it, I would like to offer my view of Yoga as I have experienced it first hand.
Yoga- What does the word mean to most of us? In general, most people have the following preconceived notions:

· Yoga is a set of convoluted postures after doing which you won’t be able to figure out your left hand from the right.
· Yoga needs a lot of time and effort. I want a quick fix to my chronic health problems.
· Yoga is too passive for my liking. I’d rather go to the gym and work out vigorously to lose some of that flab around me.
· It is something taught to huge crowds in open grounds by bearded swamis and broadcast on aastha or sanskaar channels!
· Yoga is relevant to a particular creed or group and will not benefit me because I do not belong to that group!
· Yoga leads to a “spiritual” awakening and who wants that? I just want to earn money and spend it on stuff that I can chill out with!

And So on and so forth ……

In fact, I harboured almost all of the above beliefs at one point of time or the other. However, 2 years back, I started attending (Bharat Thakur’s) Artistic Yoga classes regularly and to put it mildly, I feel quite differently now. Let me explain ….

· Yes, Yoga is to do with complicated postures, but it is a lot more than just that. My initial weeks of Yoga found me grimacing and wincing through pain and sweat as I held a pose or went through the rhythmic yet strenuous motions of a Suryanamaskaar (sun salutation). My trainer had mentioned that the real benefits start pouring in provided you persevere for a month or so and she was right. I found that once my body got the message that I wasn’t giving up, it co-operated with me better. I started enjoying the pain while holding the poses. There was a sense of achievement when my palms connected to the ground without bending my knees. Pranayama, or the breathing exercises helped me to increase my stamina and I found to my joy that I could finally do what I thought was impossible- 108 Suryanamaskaars at a stretch with the rest of the class! So, essentially, Yoga helped me to break the artificial barriers in my MIND! Now, it also made me able to handle work related stress better than prior to starting Yoga. The stress did not go away all of a sudden; I was just able to handle it better without getting worked up as before.

· At one point of time, I had compared ways of self improvement and I had looked towards alternative healing techniques like Reiki because it hardly needs effort as compared to Yoga. Down the line, I realized that the benefits of Yoga are longer lasting and even permanent if done regularly. It does need time - about an hour a day at least, to really add value. But one can start off with a half hour as well. I found that the effort also reduces with time as one gets better and better. There is another type of effort involved. That of organizing your schedule so that you can commit to spending the time for your practice. This can be a tough one - what with different types of activities pulling you in all directions and with your dependence on family or even the housemaid to get your work done on time. But all said and done, there are some areas of your life where you simply cannot compromise on the quality or quantity of time you spend on it. If you take the time out and make a list of such activities, I am certain that your health will be within the top 3 priorities. If yes, then your next challenge is to work out a way to do what it takes to be able to devote time to improving your health. With some creative thinking, you should be able to fit in time for a yoga class nearby. A suggestion here is that you join a class which is continuous, that is, it doesn’t end with a month of teaching and then you are expected to do what you learnt at home, later. It almost always doesn’t work out.

· That Yoga is good for toning the body was known earlier. However, when certain yogic exercises like Suryanamaskaar are done rapidly and with breath control, they turn out to be great cardiovascular exercises and are very effective at burning fat where it matters. Usually, at the end of every class, I am sweating but also feel very refreshed, like I have just walked out of a waterfall. Also, according to Yoga expert, Bharat Thakur, aerobics and gymming out works on the larger/longer muscles of the body, while Yoga works holistically, on even the smallest muscles right down to the cellular level. Since I have never had to “lose” weight for the simple reason of never having “gained” much weight, I can only vouch for this by speaking of some of my yoga classmates visibly slimming down over the period of a few months.

· Some Yoga teachers like Swami Ramdev have popularized Yoga tremendously in India by conducting mass Yoga sessions in huge open areas where thousands are known to turn up and move arm and limb as the man demonstrates. He is also beamed down to drawing rooms nationwide in the form of TV coverage and CDs easily available in the market. So, you can’t attend a yoga class? Bring the yoga class to your home !

· Although it is true that Yoga is associated with Hinduism, It is a universal science that has risen above religion. Patanjali, who is credited as being one of the earliest teachers of Yoga has written in his definitive work “Yoga Sutras” that Yoga is the restraining of the mind-stuff (chitta) from taking various forms (vrittis)." Swami Yogananda, one of the most respected gurus to arrive in America (1920), termed yoga the "science of mind control." All the posturing and the breathing are a means to eventually achieve this final goal. Thus, there is no mention of any particular group or creed which is linked to Yoga. It is available and accessible to anyone in the entire universe who wants to go beyond their limiting selves and be open to expanding their potential.


· I am not sure whether Yoga leads to a “spiritual” awakening, but this I am sure of - the practice of Yoga with a good teacher, changes you for life. To me Yoga means - the ease with which I face my day after having got my daily morning “dose”, the sheer joy of exploring and going beyond my limits, the desperation to get back to Yoga after a 6 months gap following a surgery and more… It is not a vague theory that lives in my mind. I practice and the results are there for me to see!

There are many different “brands” and “forms” but the underlying core of all Yoga is the same. Patanjali codified it into eight limbs (called Ashtanga Yoga) of which “Asana” and to some extent, “Pranayama” are just a small part of ONE of the limbs. It is however the “Asanas” by which Yoga is now known by, mainly in the west. Funnily enough, it is only after the west took to it in a big way that we, in India, have realized its true value. When a scheme to send Yoga tips by SMS was launched by a major mobile phone company in India, it flopped, prompting someone in California to remark in a web forum, they should have done that in California, No one does Yoga in India any more!
Yoga is a Vast and varied science which evolved out of ancient sages who were true scientists experimenting with their own bodies by observing nature all around them. So, when they say a peacock dancing gracefully, they came up with Mayurasana; When they noticed a serpent rearing its hood, they devised bhujangasana; and so on ….
I could go on and on about the deeper aspects of Yoga, but I would like to leave you with something practical- a URL to a site which depicts how to de-stress yourself while at work. Go to http://spirituality.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1484325.cms to practice desktop Yoga.
So, what are you waiting for, Find a yoga class, Get (your Yoga mat), set and Go !!!