Ideas, Dr. Nivedita Pingle.

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Yoga – The Health Religion of the Millennium.

Yoga is an ancient system of holistic living which originated in India centuries ago. It is a mind-body science, which addresses the nexus between mind and body and offers methods and tools to achieve a harmony between the two.

Yoga is practised today by millions of people across the world. Most of the people who have had experience in the science of yoga vouch for benefits for health and life in general. The new world has seen lot of celebrities subscribe to this system of good living. All this has surely helped to raise the awareness of people in general about the need to live a balanced life.

The yogic method of life has been the backbone of Indian living since ages. Most of its principles were applied as a part of daily living and were incorporated in religion. For example, it was easier to make people practise Satya, one of the Yamas by telling them that they would go to hell if they spoke the untruth; rather than by extolling the virtues of truth. Over the ages, with the western influence, physical as well as psychological, yogic way of life became redundant. Nevertheless, the beginning of the 20th century witnessed a gradual revival of yoga with a number of ashrams coming up in North India-Rishikesh, Lonavala: Kaivalyadham and the Krishnamachari school which gave the world the yoga maestro-Guruji B.K.S.Iyengar. In the early twentieth century, stalwarts like Paramahansa Yogananda, Satyananda Saraswati and others also spread the message to an America reeling under the Great Depression of the thirties and forties. With more and more of the masses becoming aware of this unique science, the elite would not lag behind. Yoga came up in a big way once again with people like Yehudi Menuhin learning yoga from Iyengar guruji. Today millions of yoga practitioners- students and teachers practise IYENGAR yoga- a specific methodology evolved by Shri Iyengar.

Today we see a third wave of resurgence of eastern knowledge being used for health with the advent of the new age lifestyle which feeds on speed and instant gratification and its resident problems. Stress Management has become the keyword for the gen X. Alternate therapies are mushrooming in every nook and corner of the world and churning out therapies has become a multimillion dollar industry globally, be it ayurvedic panchakarma, reiki, feng-shui, or Chinese medicine. The list is ever-expanding.

What does yoga mean?

The word yoga means – yoke, which is to bind together. The three faculties which make up the human being are body, mind and intelligence. The mind and intelligence generally behave like sparring partners. They live under the same roof (in the body) yet they agree to disagree with each other on most of the daily living issues. The mind is interested in NOW. It looks for fulfilling its wishes immediately, leaving all thought of the consequences to deal with later. The intelligence has the power to discriminate between right and wrong. Ideally any decision we take should be made by the intelligence. What happens most of the time, though, is that the mind rules. The mind then commands the body to do some work to fulfil its needs and demands. Thus the body always gets a fractured verdict as to how it should actually behave. This is the basic cause of all the human maladies. Yoga serves to bind the mind and intelligence and all our activities.

The path of yoga is eightfold. It has eight facets which the aspirant of yoga has to practise simultaneously. The first step is about harnessing the mental faculties- it is termed Yama. The five Yamas are- Ahimsa-non-violence, Satya-truth, Asteya-nonstealing, Aparigraha-nonattachedness, and Brahmacarya-living with the understanding that the universe and living beings are one.

The second step is termed Niyama- it is about harnessing intellectual faculties. The five Niyamas are- Sauca- purity of body , mind and speech, Santosa- being content with the fruit of action, Tapas- burning desire to learn and efforts made thereof, Swadhyaya-the urge to find out the meaning of life and self, Iswarpranidhana- surrenderfulness to god.

The third step is about physical culture. It is termed Asana. The body is the tool given to us to be able to know, feel, act and live. It is extremely important to tend to it to keep it healthy and fit. The body also has to be trained to conserve energy for higher purposes of life. Asanas teach one to attain stability of body and thereby stability of mind.

The fourth step is about learning where the remote control of the body is located and how it functions in different situations. This is called Pranayama. Prana means energy and ayama means dimensions. Pranayama teaches the aspirant to use his energy to maximum benefit. It works through the autonomic nervous system which is responsible for the auto-controls of the body-respiratory cycles, cardiac function, metabolic functions in response to ever-changing demands and situations.

The fifth step is Pratyahara. Ahara means to take in, or literally it means to eat.

Prati means opposite. Thus, Pratyahara is about withdrawing the five sense organs from their objects like scent, sight, taste, touch and sound and turning them inward to another micro-cosmos functioning in each living being. These five steps are termed as Bahiranga Sadhana. Bahiranga means external, where the physical faculties are addressed.

The last three steps are called Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. Dharana means concentration on a real object like a flame or some idol. Dhyana means contemplation- that is attaining the same concentration as in Dharana but in absence of the actual object. The memory of the object alone is enough to achieve the same state of concentration. In Samadhi, neither the object nor the memory is required to attain the state of Oneness with the universe. The yogi who has attained Samadhi lives his daily life just like any other, but does not get affected by the duality and change in life. He gains a balanced state – or of EQUILIBRIUM. The last three steps constitute Antaranga Sadhana. This eightfold path is called Ashtanga Yoga.

The health benefits of yoga are a by-product of the yogic living. Yoga provides physical stability, psychological equilibrium and harmonious functioning of the body. It can be practised by one and all- the young, the old, the very old, the weak and diseased, too. The asana and pranayama are the facets of yoga which can be easily practised by most people. The remaining facets being about mental control are more difficult to achieve for the common yoga aspirant. They need advanced study. By bringing the mind and intelligence in alignment with the bodily needs and capacities, yoga teaches one to gain equipoise in all kinds of challenges that the world has to face in life today.