yoga for health, healing and wellbeing

Hindu groups agitated in the US about yoga, why?

2010-12-01T19:54:00.001-08:00

I have been very slow in posting here owing to my other preoccupations. However, I could not resist responding to news reports that some Indians in the US claim that yoga is part of Hinduism and others who practise yoga owe to Hinduism and [by implication] should follow tenets of that religion. There are also a number of Christians who feel that practising yoga goes against Christianity.

To say that since yoga is part of Hindu religion, to practise yoga is to practice Hinduism, etc is communal posturing and goes against the deep purpose of yoga. If you seek to unite [=yoga] yourself with the almighty, you will perhaps like to soak in whatever wisdom that is available anywhere. You will also perhaps not like to divide society into sects. On the other hand if you are interested in the healing properties of yoga, how can bending your body or breathing in a particular manner go against your own religious faith? Is your faith in the god that you worship so weak?

Now, it is true that yoga originated in India and those who discovered and refined it happened to practise Hinduism. It is also true that certain sounds [especially mantras] are integral to many Hindu religious practices. But to think that doing yoga goes against other religious faiths is like saying that because taking bath, burning scent sticks, meditation, greeting and blessing are part of Hindu religious practice, others' faith would be defiled if they did these things.

So, dear yoga practitioners, do not be carried away by the self-appointed vanguards of different religions. Their shops sell only hatred. When direct hate does not sell, they fallaciously interpret scriptures, idioms, religious practices, etc.

yoga for US military, don't laugh!

2010-07-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

Fitness expert Tiny Horton has recommended that the US army adopt yoga to reduce the incidence of obesity in the troops and for overall good health of the troops. Sounds weird? Read on in this news post.

Two articles on yoga on the Hindustan Times

2010-05-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

In May end, 2010, the Hindustan Times carried a detailed article on the rise of yoga in the west. The link is here. This echoes what we have been saying about proliferation of different types of yoga and yoga's commercialisation.
In June, 2010, the paper followed up with the current info about patenting of yoga. The article is here [till they archive it to some other location].

Yoga a religious practice?

2010-02-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

We have often said firmly that yoga can be practised without a belief in Hinduism. One, because yoga is a set of exercises, and two, if the sound and postures that are required to be adopted a notion of Hindu mantras or postures to someone, he/ she can modify it to suit one's liking or leave that aside.
We came to see a video that demystifies Hinduism in a very brief discourse. You may like to have a look at it, not for yoga sake but to appreciate that a true Hindu won't mind praying to 'your' or 'his/ her' god. The video is at youtube, linked below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-mTwKQolLM

pranayama: udgitha

2010-01-28T21:03:00.000-08:00

Difficult to pronounce, this is a pranayama recommended for prayer. However, this pranayama is only for those who won't mind producing the sound of 'om', while exhaling.
Why we are saying so, as if cautioning against a hazard, is that we have found that some people are very sensitive about doing anything that even remotely relates to religions other than their own.
Let us explain further; om is supposed to be the prime sound, the sound of the universe, in Hinduism. All religious mantras of Hindus start with this sound. But this sound itself has nothing to do with Hindu rituals or beliefs. A liberal view would be to adopt it, as it is supposed to lead you to connect with the ultimate, who/ which is not a captive of any religion. If that appears too esoteric, think of om as a sound that resonates your wind pipe while you exhale; the resonance is found to be good for your nervous, endocrine and vascular systems. Without the om sound, this pranayama, perhaps, would have no benefits.

To do udgitha,

Sit in cross-legged position on a mat or folded blanket,
stretch arms so that the back of palm is placed on or near the knee,
open your fingers and bring the tips of the index finger and thumb together, letting other fingers to remain open comfortably,
inhale slowly but take a slightly deeper than normal breath,
exhale through slightly opened mouth, and producing om sound; exhale till the breath is out slightly more than normal,
repeat the above sequences 4-5 about 10 times. Slowly take it to about 50 times or more - depending upon your comfort level and time in hand.

Udgitha, as we said earlier, is a pranayama suited for prayers. Do pray to your God while doing this pranayama. Relax both physically and mentally. Leave all your anxieties out [in 99.9999999999 percent of cases, no heavens will fall if you do not worry or remain without disturbing thoughts for 5- 10 minutes]. Doing this pranayama will itself further relax you.

Christmas, holidays, new year and biting cold

2009-12-26T20:08:00.002-08:00

We wish you all merry Christmas and a very happy new year.
As the northern hemisphere is reeling under cold, we have the following small bits of advice:
a. Please do not expose your body to extreme cold and do not switch between cold outside and warm inside too often.
b. Please keep the room properly humidified in case you are using strong room warmers. For this, just keep a bucket of water in one corner of the room.
c. Please do not do yoga outside in case you are living in very cold places. At the same time, let the air in the room be fresh. You can choose an open space that is not windy and too cold. If you need to do yoga inside and it is very cold, use exhaust or air circulators or such other mechanism that circulates the inside air with fresh outdoor air; if that is not possible, keep the room slightly open to allow outside air.
d. Do not force air in and out of the nose if the nose-pipe is blocked.
e. If you are old, take extra care while doing bending exercises in winters.
f. Do not insist on jogging in a frozen park; we have explained here how you can get the same results in the comfort of your home.

mudras

2009-11-06T20:50:00.000-08:00

In this post, we shall talk about the hand gestures, called mudras. A mudra is nothing but a gesture, but may have different meanings in different contexts such as yoga and classical dance. Many of the mudras are what we routinely do, but not as a deliberate gesture, not for a long time, and not as a discipline.

Though many mudras are seen in ancient paintings and sculptures, especially those with Budhist links, mudras are secular. Many advance mudras are supposed to help in achieving great spiritual powers. Discussing the logic behind mudras as a yogic practice will be beyond this blog.

We’ll limit our discussion to a few hand gestures that have proved to be beneficial in correcting imbalances in the body or giving quick relief in acute cases. We advise that mudras should be done separately [not in succession or in one go] and for reasonable duration at a time [about 10-15 minutes]. So, we are describing here only four mudras that are safe and yet very useful. Only two mudras given below need some caution, but as their benefits far outweigh the caution, we have included them too. Please remember that mudras too can lead to problems if done wrongly.

Practice Gyan mudra regularly during your yoga session or separately. You can sit with this mudra while doing udgitha pranayama. For specific relief, do the related mudra. Do not suddenly abandon your medicines or other treatment if you find relief after doing a mudra.

Gyan mudra: Join the tips of index finger and the thumb; let the other three fingers remain straight or slightly bent comfortably. Good for memory and mental relaxation. Gets rid of sleeplessness.

Apan vayu mudra: Bring the tip of index finger to the base of the thumb and hold it there; join the tips of the next two fingers with the tip of the thumb and let the thumb slightly press them; let the little finer be straight. This mudra has been found to bring instant relief during heart attack. Regular practice of this mudra helps in curing heart ailments.

Prana mudra: Keep the index and middle fingers straight and joined; join the tips of the thumb and the last two fingers and let the thumb slightly press them. This mudra vitalizes the body, improves confidence and improves eyesight.

Shunya mudra: Bend the middle finger till it touches the palm; bring the thumb around it and press it; let the index, ring and little fingers remain comfortably straight. This mudra relieves ear pain in a couple of minutes, and is generally useful in ENT [ear, nose, throat] problems.

The following two mudras are to be performed with caution.

Vayu Mudra: Bring the tip of index finger to the base of the thumb and let it slightly press the thumb-base; let the other three fingers be straight and joined together. Good for removing gas trapped in the food canal and in relieving most types of body-aches; found to be helpful in Parkinson’s disease. [It is advised that this mudra should be stopped when the desired result is achieved.]

Linga mudra: Hold the palms of both the hands tightly in front of your body; while all the remaining fingers clasp each other tightly, straighten one hand’s thumb and encircle it with index finger and thumb of the other hand and let the two hold the straight thumb tightly. This mudra is useful for giving resistance to body against frequent cold and cough. People with a tendency to get cold and cough every now and then, especially those who are fat also, will find it very useful. However, it is advised that this mudra should not be performed forcibly or for a long time [limit it to 2-5 minutes depending upon your capacity to do it comfortably]. One must take enough water during the days when one is practicing this mudra.

One year of our yoga journey on blogspot

2009-10-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

One long year has passed since we started this blog.

We have had over 1700 visitors. Discount that by 500 as we ourselves must have visited it so many times during develpment etc, and we get a number that we would never have got in one year had we opened a yoga club or 'ashram'. We feel happy that we have been able to be in touch with so many people. If some people have visited us often, then we were visited by only 900 or 600 or 400 people. That makes us happier because if you visited us more than once, chances are that you found us useful.

Whatever the case, we tried to demystify some notions about yoga and to correct some other notions. We also tried to tell how yoga can be done correctly and without much fuss and without wasting money. Whether we succeeded in that or not, we do not know.

We shall continue writing posts on the blog, albeit at a slow pace. We are sorry for that, dear visitor.

Yoga in the news - II

2009-09-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

continued from the last post...

Four, a research at WVU has shown that yoga asanas help in lower back pain.

More and more research into yoga will, we feel, bring out the benefits of yoga on body, mind and spirit. However, as said in relation to the first news report in the previous post, we feel that yoga should not be limited to curing a particular ailment; it should be taken as a uniting way of life from which gives immense healing benefits as bye-products. If you intend to use some yogic procedure for a specific health benefit, do make it part of a carefully chosen set of asanas / pranayamas. Also, do not over-do a particular procedure. Also remember that yoga can hurt too, if done wrongly as we discuss below.

Five, a well-known physiotherapist has said that he had been getting a large number of people who have injured themselves trying to learn yoga from TV or CDs.

Please see our earlier posts on this issue. On this blog, we have been spending more time cautioning you against the unintended injuries due to abuse of yoga procedures than telling about yoga’s benefits.

We feel that learning yoga under the supervision of an expert is the best option, but if you do not have such a facility of you don’t afford that, you can definitely learn it through TV, CDs / DVDs and websites. Look for a TV show, website or CD/DVD in which the teaching session is conducted by an expert [ you can see a few videos of simple asanas and pranayamas done by Baba Ramdev]. Take all the precautions told by that expert, learn patiently and pay heed to your body’s responses to individual exercises. Take advice from experts whenever in doubt; take medical advice if you have a health issue or you feel something is going wrong after you have tried a particular yoga asana / pranayama / other procedure. Start with easy ones and stop when you reach the duration / occurrences prescribed by the expert. You take case of these, you will never repent for learning yoga from a CD / DVD or a TV show or a website or a combination of these. If we can be of any help, tell us.

Yoga in the news - I

2009-09-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

[We have not been updating this blog regularly and regret to say that we’d be as infrequent for some more time. However, we couldn’t help responding to recent newspaper reports relating to yoga. As we found that this post was getting rather long, we have divided it into two posts.]

In the recent times, yoga has been covered quite a lot in the US and Indian media. (Maybe, in other countries as well). The following five reports interested us quite a bit, and we have given our response to each of them.

One, a concern has been raised in the US that the new generation is taking to yoga and the Hindu thought that God is one. This is said to be against Christianity.

We hold that yoga should be practised in its true, whole, form to the extent possible. This includes asanas, pranayamas and some other exercises, and also means a new way of thinking / living in which you work for ‘union’ [yoga= joining together; sum total] with your body, the nature, the ultimate reality. However, if this thought interferes with your belief system even a bit, do leave the ‘yoga= union’ philosophy aside and just practise asanas, pranayams and other simple procedures and get all the health benefits you can get out of them.

Two, there are reports that the US government is planning to control the mushrooming yoga teaching schools. What the reports also say is that yoga teachers have united to stop this in some states. The intention of the government is stated to be to get tax revenue out of this booming profession.

Why not? If you are earning, do pay taxes. Moreover, part of the tax can be passed on to the rich yoga enthusiasts, and there is no dearth of them. Not all, but the established teachers / schools can just increase their rates; in a consumerist society, the costlier a commodity, the better branding it gets, no?

Three, an interview by Bikarm Chaudhary (the yoaga guru, who has ‘invented’ Bikram Yoga or Hot Yoga) claiming that his yoga can cure all ailments. He has also stated that he has trained thousands of people in his type of yoga and yoga teachers are earning many thousand dollars a year.

Bikram doesn’t need our good wishes and still, we wish him all the best in curing people. If his experiment is really beneficial and has no side effects, he has a legitimate right to sell it and make money. Patenting a set of exercises to be done in a particular manner too seems OK, but it is perhaps not OK to patent yoga asanas, which are a human heritage belonging to all.

[Our earlier posts on these subjects can be seen under 'yoga : general', 'yoga teacher' and 'religion and yoga' labels in the left column].

yoga > pranayama > anulom vilom

2009-07-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

We realize that anulom vilom is one of the simplest pranayamas and yet many people do it wrongly, so this post.

Anulom vilom is nothing but breathing alternately through the two nostrils. Inhale through one while blocking the other. Next, block the first nostril and exhale through the other nostril.

Repeat it like this: [L for left, R for right]

L in – R out – R in – L out -- L in – R out - …

Let us give you the standard procedure of doing anulom vilom.

1. Sit comfortably, with spine straight, arms on the laps. Take breath naturally.
2. Bring your right hand near you. Bend the index and middle fingers. In this condition, your thumb will be facing the ring and little fingers.
3. Bring the right hand in front of the nose so that the thumb touches the right nostril and the ring finger touches the left one.
4. Gently press the right nostril with the thumb. It will block the right nostril. Inhale through the left nostril and fill the lungs as much as you can do comfortably.
5. Hold the breath for a moment and press the left nostril with the ring finger while releasing the thumb from the right nostril. Exhale through the right nostril.
6. When you have exhaled all the air [in a deep , but not uncomfortable breath], inhale through this very nostril.
7. Hold the breath, exhale through the left nostril.

This cycle of anulom vilom can be repeated 10 times to start with. This will come to around one minute. Slowly, you may go up to about 50-60 cycles. Some yogis recommend doing anulom vilom for 15-20 minutes for getting rid of chronic metabolic problems, but that should be done only if one is able to do so without discomfort. Better is to do anulom vilom for such long period under supervision of a well-qualified yogi / yoga teacher.

Do take care of these: Do not use force in inhalation or exhalation. Do not hold breath for long periods [breath holding variants have their own do’s and don’ts]. Do not press the nostril hard. If the arm aches or feels heavy, move the elbows up and down a few times after every 5-6 cycles.

If one or both nostrils are blocked due to cough or other reason, do not blow hard to force them open. Clean the nostrils with water and sneeze away the blocking. Very gently try anulom vilom for a few times and take rest; try again, take rest; try again. If the nostrils have not satisfactorily opened yet, keep anulom vilom for some other time. Avoid doing anulom vilom in positions other than a comfortable cross-legged sitting position [sidhdhasana / padmasana].

Stray do's and don'ts

2009-07-15T00:25:00.000-07:00

This post is in response to feedback about doing yoga correctly.

1. If you are having a tingling sensation in the nose or if the nose goes numb while doing anulom vilom pranayama, chances are that you are pressing it too hard. Just press the nose lightly and the problem will go. We discover that we have not posted a detailed post yet on anulom vilom; we’ll come back with such a post soon.

2. If you have a weak spine [e.g. you have chronic back pain] and start feeling uncomfortable/ ache while sitting to do pranayamas for long durations, take support of wall or some other hard object while sitting.

3. In this post, we had mentioned about a person’s supposedly bad experience with bhramari. We have been following that case and are happy to report that ‘heaviness’ in his throat is now fully healed and he has now been experiencing all the goodness of bhramari and this pranayama has not caused him any side effect.

4. Which asana is better for doing pranayamas: Padmasana or Sidhdhasana?
We have been advocating sidhdhasana or a comfortable cross-leg position. The idea is to sit on a comfortable [but not spongy] mat, in a comfortable posture with straight spine, relaxed body and calm mind, and have fresh air and overall cleanliness. Rest is jargon!

yoga and unscientific explanations

2009-07-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

Like always, we have been guarding people against wrong/ improper/ unscientific interpretation of yoga. This post was provoked by some new expressions we found on the net.

Have you seen such explanations for the efficacy of yoga in curing ailments, increasing vigour and overall health? ‘Inhale from the chest and not stomach because most of the oxygen is absorbed in the chest.’ ‘Inhale deep and let the chest bulge like a balloon so that it absorbs oxygen efficiently.’ ‘When you do a pranayama, the oxygen or prana recharges organs.’ ‘Pranayamas and asanas cause pitta to flow up and reduces kafa/ phlegm and exits vata.’

We would call such explanations pseudo-scientific and believe that these are harming the knowledge of yoga by misguiding people. A lot of research is going on to find exact benefits of individual yoga procedures on human body and mind, and till it all is scientifically examined, we will have to depend on (i) ancient wisdom – which is by no means unscientific; (ii) experience of genuine yogis and yoga gurus, and long-time practitioners; (iii) scientific experimentation undertaken so far. So, there seems to be a tendency to not only copy what others say about the benefits of a particular exercise but also to add something from one’s imagination. Worse, people give reasons that defy logic [western logic as well as ancient oriental logic]. For example, it is known that our lungs [which are akin to sponge] cannot bulge like a balloon [as a frog’s lungs]. Similarly, prana in yoga is not oxygen but in its very basic definition it would mean life itself and the substances and energies sustaining it. As per Indian spiritual thought, prana is more than that. Yogic procedures, mainly pranayamas, do have guided breathing as their integral part, but to say that the purpose is to give the body more oxygen or to think that extra supply of oxygen would do wonders is too far-fetched. We are not sure, when yoga was discovered and during the time it evolved, people knew about oxygen as such, though they must have known the life-giving property of air and discovered how regulation of breathing in different ways helps the body.

When people talk of vata-pitta-kafa, they tend to equate them with their literal meanings, even equating kafa with its English homonym cough! Traditional doctors in India have been curing ailments – mostly with long-lasting cures and without side-effects – with Ayurveda, the oriental medical wisdom, and Ayurveda aims at a balance between these three ‘doshas’ [in very basic sense, the states of the body]. But to talk about balance of these doshas with a particular yogic exercise, without even knowing how that dosha works, is to confuse the eager but unknowing people.

yoga for constipation

2009-06-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

Many people suffer [by one guestimate, about 100 million worldwide!]from sluggish bowel movement. In many cases, chronic constipation is accompanied by bursts of irregular bowel syndrome [IBS].

Constipation can occur due to many reasons and its cure depends on properly curing that root cause. For example, constipation caused by ulceration in lower parts of the food canal cannot be cured by remedies that would help constipation caused due to deficiency of some vitamins. Remember that yoga will not cure constipation overnight; in fact your bowel movements might even slow down if you start yogic exercises and have not been exercising your abdominal muscles before. However, if you practise asanas regularly, it will help in all types of constipation by exercising the alimentary canal and associated body parts and also by correcting the flow of juices [both, digestive juices and other internal secretions].

We have been repeating again and again, it is not generally desirable to do asanas keeping specific ailments in mind, but to do a good yoga regimen correctly and regularly. So, we do not recommend doing asana A, B or C to get rid of constipation, because it will be against the sound principles of yoga. For example, some asanas are done in pair, some pairs are counter-poses of each other, and if abused, even yoga may even result in pain, overactivity of some glands, internal haemorrage, etc.

So, our advice will be to be patient and follow a regular yoga regimen. If there appears to be a serious health issue behind it, get it medically diagnosed and treated. In normal cases, yoga alongwith better dietary and bowel habits would definitely relieve you of constipation and the many problems it in turn causes. Please have a look at this post for a standard set of yoga procedures if you have not been following this blog regularly.

workout without machines

2009-06-12T22:08:00.000-07:00

This post is not on yoga per se, but how to do warming up or full workouts without wasting money on all types of equipment. [By the way, they have invented another marvelous instrument last week which is just a table-length big and is said to give a thorough workout to all your muscles. There was a big ad of it on one health TV channel.]
Let us agree that weights and machines do achieve what none of what we will be telling below can ever do - in terms of getting you bulging muscles, a wrestler's body, etc etc. But by doing what we tell you [and it is no invention, you will soon see, but a reminder of what is all around you and inside you] you will still burn a lot of calories, and give exercise to all your muscles and ligaments and joints, and viscera too. Such simple exercises will also gel very well with yoga and meditation. These will also be OK for the aged, infirm and those recuperating.

1. Walking is one of the best exercises ever discovered. Walk briskly, and when you start panting or feeling even slightly uncomfortable, take rest and start again. Walk in cool air but not in chilly winds. If it is warm, it's OK; but it should not be too warm. If it is sultry, take some water when resting in between. It should also not be too windy. A slow walk is not that beneficial, but it too is better than no exercise at all, especially for the sick and those chair-bound for long hours. Move arms to and fro, briskly if you can. In between, move them sideways. If you are perfectly healthy, jog or run along with quick walk. For walking to be useful as an exercise, it has to be faster and for longer periods than comfortable. It has also to be regular - daily or nearly so. If you have to burn calories, and you are perfectly fit, you must walk or jog or run rigorously. But if you apprehend a health problem due to long and brisk walk [such as due to age or family cardiac history or a long-forgotten spinal injury], you must consult doctor.
2. But walking requires that you get ready and go out. Except for a few places on the earth, the walking trek would either be dusty or cold or hot or windy - at least in some part of the year. It might even rain or snow. You may not have a park or garden or jogging trek near you. Or you may just not have the inclination to first go ten floors down and then go walking.
Here come the exercises that we are recommending, to give you the required workout - and benefits of long walk - without any need to go out.

1. Stand on the floor in loose-fitting and light clothes and without any type of shoes. [If the flooring is cold, stand on a folded bedsheet or mat.] Take care that you have not eaten anything in the last around two hours except for some water or non-alcoholic beverage. Also make sure that the room is not closed/ stuffy/ too much perfumed/ without ventilation and too hot/cold/sultry. Switch on fan on low speed if it is slightly warm.
2. Start walking [first very slowly and then slightly faster] either without moving from the place OR walk a few steps forward and then come back without turning back [that is, walk reverse]. Do it till you are slightly tired, say for 3-5 minutes. When doing this type of walk without moving from the place, do not keep the location of the feet stationary. Rather walk - move one foot slightly forward and the other backward; then bring both feet together; then bring the first foot backward and the other forward; keep repeating this cycle.
3. Now, while doing 2, stretch your arms and move them forward and backward, clapping as they reach their farthest in front and behind you. Do so for 1-2 minutes. Add leg movement from knee [that is, lift your feet high while walking.] This movemnt of all four limbs can conitinue for 1-2 minutes [depending on time in hand and your physical condition.]
4. Slow down. Take rest if you need to, otherwise keep walking slowly. This time, fix your sight on something in front and take a turn to your lift while walking. Without force, let your body bend to left as much as it can. While continuing to walk and with sight fixed, come back to normal and continue towards right. Do it two turns to each side and come to normal [facing in front].
Now on, the exercises are going to be brisker.
5. Bring your arms in front of the chest and take them apart as if pulling a tight spring. Repeat it about 25-30 times; if you have a spondylitis problem, pull the arms away in a relaxed position.
Now stretch the arms in front, with palms facing down, and pull them near the chest again as if pulling a tight spring. Repeat for 25-30 times. Keep doing walking all the while.
6. This is the final exercise before you slow down. While still walking / slightly jogging, dance. Dance as rhythmically and as wildly as you can. Jump if you like, twist the body if it is comfortable, laugh loudly [without sound ] and make faces as if you've gone mad, but don't overdo so that you do not hurt yourself. Keep dancing as much as you can. If it is OK otherwise , do it till you pant and are tired and sweating. Enjoy it to the hilt; keep worries aside; suspend your thought process; just dance.
7. Once you think it is enough for you, slow down. Walk still, but slowly. Do the exercises of stretching the limbs and turning around as said above, but very slowly. Do it for half a minute to 2-3 minutes depending upon how much dancing you have done. Then lie down in shavasana for 1-2 minutes, before going for other exercises / yoga.
For most people, this much exercise with pranayama will be good enough daily fitness regime. See these posts [1, 2] for yoga procedures that you might like to do after a thorough warming up.

Yoga :where does it fit between regular exercises and occult

2009-06-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

Some questions come in the minds of many people and some of us ask these questions again and again: Should I be happy with a yoga set or should I do yoga along with other exercises? Should I mix yoga with other exercises and other health / spiritual systems such as reiki, acupressure and tantra?

We have tried to answer such questions here and there. Thought, let's put together our views on the subject in one place, so this post.

One. Yoga is a stand-alone system of body-mind-spirit health, but it can be mixed with any other system.

Two. Yoga is to be done moderately [maybe, except by expert hatha yogis] and with the aim to be healthy in body, mind and spirit. So, it will not lead to 'six pack abs'. For this very reason, mixing yoga with rigorous gym workout will waste yoga. If you want to do yoga while maintaining a 'macho' body, do yoga separately [better if you do muscle building exercises in the mornings and yoga in the evenings].

Three. We cannot recommend mystical/ metaphysical practices either as a part of yoga or separately. These practices may have their benefits or powers, but unlike what is advised in many websites, we would advise that you should do practices that do not stand to common sense only under supervision of a master and after understanding their consequences. However, doing some ancient/ oriental practices such as use of acupressure or mudras to relieve pain or envigorate some organ may be OK even if you learn them online or from books, but after due consideration. Mixing them with yoga is not a good idea except when permitted by genuine yoga experts or when such practices intrinsically gel with a yoga procedure and have been so described in yoga treatises [eg. doing meditation with gyan mudra].

Four. Take with a pinch of salt if anybody claims that you will get supernatural powers by doing yoga A, B or C , or someone promises you that s/he will permanently cure cancer and HIV with a few asanas daily for a week, or a yoga teacher shows you photos / video of twisted spine and entangled limbs to explain what yoga is and to convince you that your body will become so flexible after some asanas, or a friend advises you to do asana X or pranayama Y for an ailment because he got completely cured of a similar ailment by doing X/Y, or someone talks in confusing alien language, chants incomprehendible mantras, asks you to stare at complex geometric designs or makes you do scary occult things and then tells that it is all ancient 'science' from India.

Five. Remember that what we are discussing here is the two basic components of yoga - asanas and pranayamas. Yoga is a way of life - a way of life that teaches you to be healthy and well and in unison with the creation.

Yoga websites

2009-05-29T06:10:00.000-07:00

We did some web-surfing to check what all was being written in various websites on yoga these days. We came across some interesting description of yoga, also equally interesting advice on ailments and procedures. The claims about yoga’s power in treating diseases were also eye-opening. We have copy-pasted them on our computer and would share them with you now and then. Stating with these three:

A major yoga and pilates conference is to be held sometime next year. By the information given on the site, it will be a grand affair by all counts. Their site is very well designed and fits well as a marketing tool for what appears like a trade show. They have a slide show on the site with people in soothing poses but some yoga poses/ pilates they are doing are better not done by the common people . [Are we all as healthy and chiselled-bodied as the models?] This takes us to a new fad of ‘fusing’ yoga with pilates, or yogilate as they have started calling it. This new health-mantra is supposed to give you a dancer’s body.

One site tells you that if you have migraine, you stand on your head [=shirshasana]. This, it says, will improve blood circulation in your brain and get you rid of all brain problems including migraine. [We shudder at the thought of somebody suffering from migraine doing shirshana.]

A yoga site teaches yoga online, charges you very little [not more than $30 per month after discounts] and promises you a body that is fit for circus [it does not use the word ‘circus’ but it shows the teacher doing great body-twists].

Yoga can really hurt you!

2009-05-26T03:41:00.000-07:00

If you have been following our posts cautioning you against doing yoga wrongly, by now you might be finding them too defensive. If you are not properly briefed about yoga, you might also feel scared of doing yoga.

Let us clarify once again. When I say, yoga can hurt I am only reminding you that you can hurt yourself even when you bend to lift a small weight or turn to a side when your child calls you. It really happens to thousands of people everyday as the nerves/ligaments/pads in various joints are sometimes pulled/torn/misaligned/damaged with even a slight pressure. So, sometimes you can hurt yourself even though yoga might be only as much to blame as turning to a side. However, the chances of getting hurt are much higher here, because you are bending and twisting your body and taking breath in a different than usual manner.

Before we repeat our cautions, which will eliminate the chances of injury to a great extent, let us scare you a bit more. It has been reported in a MSNBC news item of 2007 that nearly 4,500 people ended up in the emergency room after yoga injuries in 2006. Scores of people have recounted to us their tales how even very meticulously done yoga had damaged their spines, wrists, nerves and bones and they had to be hospitalised to come back to normal.

We once found that a reputed yogi once held yoga classes in a university and asked the university to arrange a closing ceremony where students could show how effortlessly they could perform even difficult asanas. Some students got carried away by the public applaud when they started doing asanas, and they twisted themselves too much to impress the gathering. One of them developed back pain at a young age and we have reasons to believe that excessive twisting of the spine was the reason for that. You might find many dramatic examples of such injuries if you do a ‘google search’ on the net for injuries caused by yoga.

We have always been advising and let’s repeat here that (i) yoga must be done very moderately, (ii) all pains during/ following yoga procedures should be taken as a warning sign, (iii) only those asanas, pranayamas and other procedures should be performed as are suited to one’s age, sex and overall health condition, (iv) yoga must never be overdone and never be experimented upon mindlessly, and (v) yoga should generally be done as a set of procedures for overall health rather than particular procedures for a particular cure. We do not advocate yoga to common people as a religious rite or a spiritual tool. Yoga, we firmly believe, heals body, mind and spirit but that does not mean that yoga will cure all your ailments or give you mystic powers; heal it will if you follow its tenets. Think of yoga as a hammer – a very valuable tool for assembling beautiful furniture. Handle it wrongly and you can break the same furniture with it.

By the way, the news item that we referred to above says, the injuries have mostly been due to inexperienced teachers and/or overeager students. Haven’t we been cautioning against this?

Yoga for migraine and headache

2009-05-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

Migraine is a type of headache which is usually in one side of the head and accompanied with nausea and raised sensitivity to loud sounds and strong light. The pain is heavy. It is often preceded by seeing flashing lights and aura around lights. It is sometimes difficult to say whether a pain is migraine or a muscular pain or one caused by other reasons.

The yoga asanas and pranayamas given below have been proven to be effective, sometimes 100 percent, in migraine as well as other types of headache.

If you suffer from migraine or any chronic headache that is caused by nervous or vascular factors [not due to injury, muscle pull, wrong posture during sleep, acute constipation, sudden burst of loud noise or very strong light, cervical spondylitis, and so on], you will soon notice reduced frequency and intensity of pain. Each bout of migraine would also last lesser time. Eventually, you will get rid of migraine sooner or later depending upon the history and the root cause. Research has proved that yoga is very useful in preventing, managing and eventually controlling migraine. We have also come across many reported cases of migraine cure through yoga.

The following yoga procedures are especially beneficial in preventing and curing migraine. These should be part of the patient’s regular exercise routine, even after migraine has stopped occurring.
One caution: Do not carry out asanas [or any physical activity for that matter] in which either (i) head and neck move in jerk or (ii) head is lowered below heart level. Yoga has many asanas such as sarvangasana, shirsasana, shalabhashana and mayurasana in which head is lowered, other body parts are raised above head or a lot of pressure is applied on the head. These should be avoided. Again, pranayamas must not be done with undue force.

Shavasana. Try relaxing the whole body. Keep in this posture for as long as you can but try not to fall asleep. You can do its advance version, a basic form of yoga nidra. [Puritans would scoff at out calling such relaxation as yoga nidra, and we understand that.] Lie down in shavasana. Feel that all parts of the body and all limbs are totally relaxed. Think of neural nodes along the spine; starting with the base of the spine [near anus], keep relaxing the spine upwards till you reach the head. Remain in this position for as long as you can, all the time imagining the entire body in fullest relaxation possible.

Kapal bhati pranayama. Do it regularly every morning. Repeat in the evening if possible. The correct way of doing this pranayama and do’s and dont’s are given in earlier posts.

Anulom vilom pranayama. Do it equally regularly and follow do’s and dont’s.

**When migraine sets in and you have not yet started following the yoga regimen given here or started it very recently:
It is highly probable that if you have migraine, you would start taking medicine whenever you havewarning symptoms. Do take the first dose of such medicine, but start totally relaxing your body through shavasana or yoga nidra. When the next right time comes [yoga procedures must not be done just after meals, etc] do the kapalbhati and anulom vilom pranayamas. If the first sets of yoga help, take rest of the medicines after making judgement whether you need to take lesser doses. Though this gradual way of reducing medicine is safe, consult your doctor in case of doubt.

Yoga for not so busy people

2009-05-10T08:45:00.000-07:00

We posted this post long back for those whose bodies do not allow heavy exercise because of old age or some health issue AND for those who do not have time for doing exercises / yoga for long periods.

In the present post, we give a regimen for those wanting to make yoga a part of their daily routine. Yoga, in the limited context of physical health that we are concerned with in the present post, refers to some asanas and pranayamas. Maybe, we'll talk about yoga in totalily sometime later, which has a big spiritual component and has a much greater power of healing and overall well-being.

One more thing before we start: this regimen will keep you healthy, full of energy, in good shape - but it will not give you a muscular body or reduce your weight by ten kilos in a month.

Time for full regimen: 35-45 minutes, as follows:

1. Warming up [5-10 min]

Yoga is most preferably done in the morning, but just after hours of sleep the body joints are not yet loosened enough to allow for unusual twists and turns. So we need to do a set of warm up exercises. These may consist of a- jogging / running / treadmill running, b- brisk movement of arms, bending them at elbows and calf and taking them in all directions in forward-backward and left-right directions, c- a few pushups or situps, and d- random movements of the whole body as if briskly dancing. Choose your own set in such a way that your entire body gets exercised. Make it enjoyable by playing a soothing tune or simply enjoying the mild tiredness that you feel.
Sometime later, we shall talk about a simple yet effective way of warming up with all the benefits of brisk walk and modern day aerobic / heart-training exercises but without the need for a jogging track or gym equipment.

2. ASANAS

a. Sarvangasana [standing on one's shoulders] [1-2 min]

* Do sarvangasana as described in this post.
* After it, take half a minute rest in shavasana [which is nothing but lying down face up and completely relaxing the body].

b. Uttanasana - an easy variant [forward and backward bending while standing] [2 turns: 2 min]

* Stand straight, bring your arms straight in front, slowly move them straight over the head.
* Inhale slowly and slowly bend the back to the extent you comfortably can.
* Swing in a very slow motion your entire body forward [arms still stretched beyond your head], and exhale at the same time.
* Come to a pose in which your fingers are touching your feet [this may not happen if your spine is not supple enough, as due to age, not doing exercise, spine problem] and the body is bent in near 'U' shape. Hold in this position for 20-30 seconds and slowly raise your body [arms still stretched] till you have reached straight standing position.
* If you are above 30 and ever had back-ache, take care not to lift the body from the U position upwards by rolling the spine; instead, bend the arms and put your hands on the knees to support the spine.

c. Pashchimottanasana [forward bending while sitting] [2 turns: 2-3 min]

* Sit with legs extended straight in front. Keep the spine straight and arms straight, upon the legs. Inhale slowly and keep raising arms straight up; let the palms face down and then ahead.
* Now exhale slowly and keep bending the body at the waist; let the arms move with the bending head till you can comfortably do. Hold in this position as long as you can.
* Inhale slowly to come back to the initial standing position.

a+b+c. Surya namaskar [prostrating before the sun] [4-6 turns: 6-10 min]

* Do surya namaskar as described in this post.
* Take a minute's rest in shavasana.

d. Forward and backward bending exercises while lying down [3 poses: 5-6 min]

-- d1.Bhujangasana [cobra posture]

* Lie on the rug, with face down. Let the head be turned to a side and palms facing down while lying next to the body.
* Bring the head straight, with chin placed on the floor.
* Bring the palms next to your chest, and let the hand rest next to the body.
* Inhale slowly while lifting the head up as much as you can comfortably do. The spine should arch from waist till neck, and the hips should not be raised.
* Hold for 10-20 seconds, slowly come down to lying position while exhaling.
* Initially, you may need to support the upward bent spine with the hands, but later less support would be needed. Similarly, if your spine is stiff do not bend it forcibly.

-- d2. Shalabhasana [locust posture]

* Lie down with face down as described above.
* Inhale and raise your legs upwards, using the abdomen muscles.
* Hold in this position for 10-15 seconds and let the legs come down while slowly exhaling. Do not let the tension of holding in this posture go to your neck and head.
* If you cannot perform this asana, in the first stage, lift only one leg at a time and alternate with the other leg.

-- d3. Dhanurasana [bow posture]

* Lie on the floor as in the upper two postures.
* Bend the legs from knees and hold the ankles with the hands. Initially, it may be difficult; keep trying over many days to reach this level if you have stiff spine or big tummy.
* Slowly inhale and use leg and arm muscles to bend the body like a bow: the middle part on the ground and legs and chest-head raised as much as possible. Hold the posture as long as you comfortably can.
* Exhale slowly and bring the legs and chest-head to the floor. Then come back to the lying position, and relax with head turned to a side.
* Take half a minute rest in this posture or in shavasana.

e. Ardha-matsyendrasana [lateral bending] [1-2 min]

* Sit with legs straight in front of you. Inhale slowly.
* Bend the right leg [whole of it resing on the floor] at knee and dig the heel at the joint of the legs, below the genital organs. Now bend your left leg, knee facing upwards.
* Lift the left foot over the right thigh and bring it to the other side of it. In this stage your legs are twisted but rest of the body is straight up.
* Now take your left arm to the right as far as you can, behind the back.
* Take your right arm to the left side, in front, so that your elbow pushes past your left knee. Try to touch your right toes, but leave it if you cannot do that in the intial days.
* Come back to the sitting position while slowly exhaling.
* Reverse the sequence: bend the left leg... etc etc...
* So, in one sequence, the body twists like S and in the second, it twists like Z.

f. Rest in shavasana [1-2 min]

3. PRANAYAMAS

a. Kapal bhati [blow for glow] [3-5 min]

* Do this pranayama as described here.
* Take rest while sitting, for about half minute.

b. Anulom-vilom [alternate nostril breathing] [3-5 min]

* While sitting, close one nostril and inhale with the other; close the other nostril and exhale and then exhale; repeat this again and again. We shall later have a detailed post on the correct way of doing this pranayama.
* Take rest while sitting, for about half minute.

c. Bhramari [humming through nose] [8 turns: 4-5 min]

* Do bhramari as given in an earlier post.
* Take rest while sitting, for about half minute.

d. Udgitha [humming through mouth] [8 turns: 4-5 min]

4. Rest [1-3 min]

* Take rest in shavasana, but if you are not tired, you can rest while sitting.

Yoga exercises: side effects

2009-05-01T21:35:00.000-07:00

We have witnessed many a yoga practitioner complaining of one or the other health issues after they started doing yoga asanas, pranayamas and other yogic exercises. We list here some of such feedback.

The following examples are true-life stories narrated by people to us or others. We have given our comments after each example based on our study of those individual cases.

1. I started doing some pranayamas after seeing it on a popular news channel. Initially, it cured me of my age-old blocking of nostrils and frequent attacks of common cold. However, after some three months of exercising, I find that I get more severe attacks of cold and cough and my nostrils are blocked as before.

We found that she was doing kapal bhati and anulom vilom pranayamas, and was specially fascinated by kapal bhati. She followed the proper procedure for some days and after that she started doing it 'anytime, anywhere' because she wanted to practise it for a long time per day. She even increased the intensity of each exhalation. She also kept on doing kapal bhati when she got common cold, thus hurting the already infected linings. As for getting more frequent attacks of common cold / flu, we believe that she was not cleaning her hand before using the fingers to close the nostrils. Unclean fingers are likely to take flu/ cold germs straight to the nose.

2. I have tried all types of asanas but my backache has only aggravated instead of getting cured. I have been following yogasanas very meticulously.

He had been suffering from pain in the lower back after a severe slip disk some years back. He really did correct asanas and the correct way, but a bit more than his injured spine would bear. In such a case, he should have started with only one or two mild exercises and slowly increased their number and duration. We have advised him to start afresh with just two forward and backward bending asanas; hope his spine is healed over time.

3. I read on a popular website that doing sarvangasana results in better eyesight. But my eyesight seems to have worsened more quickly than it had been earlier. I have -5.0 myopia.

Sarvangasana is only for perfectly healthy people, and high myopia is also counterindicated. This university student has been doing sarvangasana [shoulder-stand] and keeping in this position for over 10 minutes. Even for people with no health issues at all, it is not advised to keep in upside down position for more than 5 minutes.

4. I have been doing yoga under guidance from a certified yoga teacher. He had promised that my tummy will be reduced significantly withing 3 months, but it has reduced only by 3 inches. I would achieve much more than that by any exercise.

Two comments here. One, doing asanas with one purpose, that too for removing a symptom is not advisable. Obesity or more-than-desirable weight are symptoms of body structure and metabolism gone wrong due to bad eating habits, lack of exercising or some endocrine or metabolic malfunctioning etc. To tackle them, we must attack the root cause.

Two, in our opinion it does yoga no good if its teachers guarantee instant benefits. Yoga is a way of life, rather than a set of exercises meant for treating specific ailments. Yoga's results - general or specific - take some time to become evident, and we have to have patience. This lady seems to have gone for yoga after trying other trimming exercises, and with the hope that it would reduce her tummy by 12 inches in a month. Now, if in frustration she leaves yoga midway and goes for something else, she might end up gainingand losing weight in turns. Ladies have also the tendency for hormone related weight gain when they reach puberty.

5. I have regular heaviness in my throat after I started doing bhramari pranayama. I have been doing it for the last 3 months and the problem developed in the last month only. I have stopped it for one week but the heaviness persists.

Bhramari pranayama can result in sore throat or heaviness only in such cases: when it is done with force; when vibrations / sound are produced from lower throat; when it is done for very long times in one stretch; when it is done during throat / nasal infections. In this particular case, the heaviness in throat could be unrelated to bhramari at all, as the problem has not gone away after a week of stopping bhramari. It is extremely unlikely that bhramari can hurt throat. We are yet studying this case as we personally know the gentleman.

There are numerous such stories that we come across. People tend to relate unrelated things and take individual experiences as rules. In the western world and non-Hindu, non-Indian societies, yoga is also thought of as a mystical / tantrik system. Such notions result in various problems getting associated with yoga. Let us humbly submit that there is nothing inherently wrong with yoga procedures. The reported problems, if at all they can be correctly associated with yoga, can occur due to following a wrong procedure, doing an exercise at a wrong time, over-doing some exercises, or doing exercises that do not suit a person's age, sex and health condition. That is why in this blog we have been stressing a lot more on don'ts than do's of yoga.

research links: more of them

2009-04-22T03:53:00.000-07:00

We have listed some useful external links in the left column of this blog. We came across a few webpages giving detailed articles and/or research papers on yoga, and thought we should share with them. Prima facies, the content in these sites is good, but we are not in a position to certify any article/ paper as genuine or any content as fully dependable.

1. This one gives summaries of a number of research papers on yoga, alongwith the source and authors: openmindbody.com.

2. This page from IAYT website contains a number of good articles on yoga.

3. This one too has a list of articles on different aspects of yoga: yoga research society

4. This page of yoga research today website has a number of research articles taken from different publications.

As we promised, no more ads, even for experimentation

2009-04-21T09:03:00.000-07:00

We are happy to see over a thousand visitors to this blog. We have seen bloggers announcing millions of visitors in seven months, but we are really happy to find that a thousand people did visit us and perhaps a few hundred made use of the info and advice we have given here. Some of you seem to be visiting the blog again and again, and that gives us more pleasure.

So, we removed the link-referral link and also all ad-sense ads from the blog. Your hits on the ads did generate some dollars, which we will let lapse. As said earlier, we are not in the business of making money out of this blog or of popularising it for popularity sake.

Our only request to the prospective visitors is - kindly make the best use of the information and advice that we give here. You are free to use it the way you want, but only for the welfare of your own and/or the society. If you use the contents of this blog in your book/ blog/ site, we'll appreciate if you notify us. But that is your sweet will.

Pranayama> Bhramari> III: benefits

2009-04-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Many of the benefits of pranayamas are known to us through yoga gurus and experience. However, since systematic research on yoga procedures is only a recent phenomenon, only sporadic findings are available. Yet, the initial research and empirical data from yoga camps show that yogic procedures, especially pranayamas, do have beneficial effect on nervous system/brain, blood pressure, heart, cholesterol and sugar levels, and so on. When we do yoga systematically for a long time, we experience its profound impact on our physical and mental health; it is not always possible to say which benefit came from which asana or pranayama or which combination.

Bhramari pranayama is a nerve calming pranayama. It is found to reduce tension, anxiety and blood pressure. People have reported reduced migraine pain after doing this pranayama for a few days.
Bhramari is a must for those wanting to meditate and keep their mind calm.
If you are in a highly stressful job, do practise this pranayama for a few days and you will realise that the tendency to get worked up during tense moments has come down significantly. This will indirectly help you in many other ways.

In two often quoted studies it was found that bhramari reduced anxiety and tension during surgery and post-operative recovery AND it led to less number of complications during childbirth and higher infant weight.

Bhramari has also been reported to be helpful in these cases: menopause, ear problems, withdrawal symptoms [during drug rehab programs], diabetes.

pranayama > bhramari > II: FAQs

2009-04-10T01:56:00.000-07:00

I am giving answers to some most likely questions on bhramari.

Which part of the air pipe should the humming sound come from?

The hum gets generated by vibration of the wind pipe. In bhramari pranayama, we let the passage behind the soft palate, and the passages above and below it to vibrate soothingly. What it means is that we do not force the vibration from the throat or nasal cavity. Doing it this [incorrect] way can lead to pharynxitis or sinus-related problems.

Should I press my chin to the chest?

Not, unless a yoga expert asks you to do with a specific purpose. Keep your head comfortable.

How many times should I repeat the breathing? For how long should I do bhramari pranayama in one sitting?

You can start with as few as three-four inhalation-exhalation cycles and go up to about 5 minutes. You can do it longer, if your health and age permit. In fact, being very simple and effortless and yet very beneficial, bhramari pranayama is eminently suited for busy, sick and old people. The golden rule, as always, is to do pranayamas comfortably and without applying undue force.

With which finger should I plug the ear-hole, and what is the correct position of arms during bhramari ?

Use the thumb, and fan the elbows away from body. Place the fingers above and below the eye, caring not to press the eye-ball. However, if this posture tires or pains your arms, while pressing the ear-holes with thumbs, let the arms fall comfortably to your sides. Then, you can lightly press the head above ears with your fingers to give support to the arms.

My arms ache when I keep them fanned away from body. My shoulders have started aching after I started doing bhramari pranayama. My spondylitis has aggravated due to bhramari pranayama.

Keep arms in the alternative posture given above. Or, are you doing bhramari pranayama for a duration longer than suitable for your age and general health condition?

Can I do bhramari pranayama before/after other pranayamas? Can I do bhramari after asanas?

Bhramari pranayama suits all yoga regimens. Just take care that it should not be done when you are actively exercising; so, take 2-3 minute rest after asanas. Keep a minute or so in between pranayamas too.

Do the general instructions for doing pranayamas apply to bhramari pranayama also?

Very much. Please see the general guidelines on this post and elsewhere on the blog.

Should I hold the breath just before exhaling? Is it OK if the humming sound breaks?

You should not hold the breath between inhalation and exhalation. Inhale a bit deeper than normal [not too deep] and slowly exhale with humming sound. Don’t let the humming sound die down or go away, though it is natural to lose the sound when you are not used to it. As far as possible, maintain a smooth, uninterrupted as well as unlabored sound. Try to make it melodious, and not a drone. In any case, do not let the sound come in bit like this: hmmmmm- hmmmmm- hmmmmm- hmmmmm.

Should I keep my jaws clasped while humming?

No. Let the teeth of the upper and lower jaws not touch.

We'll talk about the many benefits of bhramari pranayama later.

pranayama > bhramari > I: basics

2009-04-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

In this post, we shall discuss the bhramari pranayama, especially how to practice it.

Bhramari pranayama is one of the simple, yet very effective, pranayamas that one can do with ease.

In Sanskit, bhramar refers to black bumble bee, and as we hum doing this pranayama, we call it bhramari pranayama.

There are different variations of bhramari pranayama according to whether you press your ears with this finger or that, or whether you pull your lower body parts in or keep relaxed, or whether you draw your chin to the chest or not, or how you sit. As in the case of other asanas and pranayamas explained in this site, we recommend doing yoga in its simple form, but without being imperfect.

The procedure begins:

* Sit in a comfortable posture, keeping in mind the general requirements given here.
* Bring your thumbs next to your ears in a way that your elbows are spread out [your arms look like wings on the sides of your head]. Put the thumb lightly on the ear-hole to plug it but don’t press it too much.
* Inhale in a natural way.
* Exhale slowly for as long you can comfortably do it, generating a humming sound from the back of your palate. This is important. You should not force the nose or deep inside throat, but the back of the palate, for producing the humming sound. Let the entire area including nose and windpipe resonate with the humming sound. Do not break the breath while exhaling, nor hold the breath unnaturally to make the exhalation long.
* Do the inhalation-exhalation for upto 15-20 times, but if you feel you can comfortably do it for only 4-5 times, do not force yourself beyond that.

We shall talk more about bhramari pranayama in some later post. This pranayama is quite useful in controlling blood pressure and emotional tension/ anxiety.

Yoga for beauty

2009-03-30T05:59:00.000-07:00

We'll perhaps have time to talk how yogic procedures help a person turn beautiful, but right now we are in a slightly cynical mood. Yoga in its highest form would have no room for cynicism, as much as it would ignore the crap appearing in the media in the name of yoga, exhibitionism and crass commercialisation of yoga. But we feel, it is our duty to share with you what we don’t ascribe to.

You might have seen photos and videos of a very famous beauty queen telling before cameras and flashlights that the secret of her youth, energy and fitness was yoga. The next time she was asked what made her face glowing, and the reason she gave was yoga. Now, what she said might be her honest notion and what she said might help in the spread of yoga. But that does not make us too happy. The yoga spread this way would be yoga focussed on making you look beautiful the way creams, exercises, massage and facials etc do. Yoga becomes a product that is sold, bought and flaunted. Some viewers and readers of channels/mags in which the lady appeared will turn fans of this consumerist form of yoga, which we feel goes against the yoga spirit. On the other hand, some will not get the promised benefits after doing yoga for a month and may call it a bluff. We feel that yoga loses in both these situations.

DVDs of a beautiful Indian actress are selling like hot cakes in the UK, it is reported, as she tells women how to have a slim waist without dieting. Her yogic postures are said to be perfect, having been overseen by master yogis. And yes, her postures are erotic, they are entertaining to males, they cause envy in women wanting to look beautiful. They serve a purpose, they sell too well [which itself is supposed to be a great virtue], but do they teach you the essence of yoga?

Another actress’s near-naked poses in jungles, in various yogic postures, have appeared on u-tube. In another website, a heroine is seen dancing and claiming that this type of yoga merges your spirit with the holy spirit. Some sites tell you how to awaken your kundalinis, the energy centres in the body, for supernatural powers. A website lists a number of asanas and tells, for flat tummy, you do this, for well-shaped breasts do this, for curved waist do that, and so on. We find that such efforts to sell yoga are mostly unethical.

We are sure, yoga makes you beautiful; but whether you will look beautiful after doing yoga for ages, we can’t say. We doubt the claims that yoga chisels your features and firms up your body parts to give you a perfect body according to the going fad. Yoga, done in a proper way and in yogic spirit, will heal your body and spirit. If you call that beauty, fall in the lap of yoga and enjoy its fruits; if not, do yoga as an exercise regimen until you are fed up with it.

yoga and school education

2009-03-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

It is exam time in India: over 15 million children are taking X and XII exams. These are 'Board exams', conducted by the country's biggest examination agency. Board exams are external exams and as such cause a lot of anxiety to students. In fact, a number of students even commit suicide when they find the going very tough or when their results are not upto their expectations. This is serious but not enough education reforms have taken place, partly because educationists do not know how to get the enormity of effort required. Competition coupled with parental, teacher and peer pressure makes the things worse. In all, school education is quite tough in India and it puts a huge emotional and physical burden on young boys and girls.

In a recent discussion on a TV channel, an educationist advised students to practice simple pranayama to deal with exam stress as well as to improve concentration. Her comments looked apt, and we put them below, of course based on memory and not verbatim:

I have been a counselor in a good number of schools and have been posed with these problems and questions – My child cannot sit for studies even for half an hour at a stretch. How can I improve my concentration as my mind wanders here and there whenever I sit down to study? I feel nervous and cannot concentrate at all when the exams approach. I get ache in my abdomen before exams. I always fear, I will fail. I nearly tremble in the first few minutes of examination…
It has been proved empirically that simple pranayama done everyday helps remove most of such stress related problems. Better still, it permanently cures problems of poor concentration and difficulty in memorizing things.
Interestingly, when I first told pupils to practice pranayama, they thought I was joking. For them, and also their parents, pranayama was to be done in old age and was more of a spiritual practice. Then we discovered a way around: I stopped taking yoga classes, which I had been doing as an extra activity. a Parent Teacher Meeting, our Physical Training teacher told parents about a set of breathing exercises interspersed with meditation which had been adopted a reputed US business school. With some material on the internet, he could convince them that it indeed worked great on pupils of all age. Parents agreed to try it out, and the children too showed interest (perhaps goaded by their parents). Nothing of it was a lie but it was packaged in a different form by someone who was not known to be a yoga enthusiast. The trick worked and slowly the teacher, always in consultation with me, corrected students' postures and converted the exercises into pranayama the way it should be done. It did a lot of good to the students. Only after around six moths did we tell the parents that what their children had been doing was pranayama.
That was fifteen years ago. Now there is a lot of interest in yoga in schools and elsewhere. In fact, it has become a fashion to tell that you do yoga. But students tend to do yoga asanas and pranayama like other exercises - fast and for fun. This is not the way it should be done.
For exam related problems, do about 12 anulom vilom and do meditation for one minute at a time. Repeat it twice a day, once after getting up in the morning and the second time before taking evening snacks... Do some sort of prayers before sitting for studies... Do simple asanas and anulom vilom daily - make it a habit so that you do not have to do them specially during exam time... The asanas for boys and girls of teen age are: Surya Namaskar, Tadasana, Padahastasana, Paschimottana, Ushtrasana, Shalabhasana and Dhanurasana...

Our comments on what the lady said would follow.

Patenting yoga

2009-02-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

In 2007, yoga's self professed guru, Bikram Chaudhry, tried to patent what he christened as Bikram Yoga - a set of asanas to be done in a hot, humid room. There was a lot of hue and cry and reports came that this form of exercises have indeed been granted patnet in the US. The US government issued denial about any patent having been issued for yoga.

A news article on the Times of India now reports that about 130 patents have already been granted on yoga. To counter such attempts, the Indian government has documented yoga postures available in various scripts.

Patent or no patent, yoga has become a big business. The same news report says, yoga has become a $225 billion industry.

Perhaps this commercialisation is what has made yoga so popular in the western world. I suppose, not many people would have gone for yoga if it were offered free. Though it is a victory of consumerism over the principles of yoga, we can derive a little consolation in that yoga still is helping people overcome pain, depression and bodily imbalances.

who are we

2009-02-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

We are two disciples of a yogi. One of us happens to be influenced by the new tech tools and the other one is [by the first one's reckoning] supposed to have more knowledge about the body, the mind, the spirit and their links with yoga.

We intend to share with the world the little knowledge of yoga that we have, and to share it free of cost and without gaining individual popularity for this effort.

Then why have you put ad_sense advts on the blog, you might ask. And you might also ask why do we not have an ashram or a school to teach yoga for free. This would be a better way to help people, you might think.

We thought some of our visitors might think what we have written above, and so our explanations here:

We have put ad_sense ads on the blog after a lot of discussion among us, and then the techie one prevailed with the following argument: Let us explore. I am sure, not much money would flow to us, and if at all we get a penny or two we will donate 50 percent of it right away to charity and about the rest too we would decide when it comes. We have not got any mentionable sums so far and we do NOT call upon you to hit the advts only for the sake of filling our coffers. We might, based on some more experience, do away with adsense.

We are ordinary people, with our families to tend. We also believe in having an ethical way of life. So, we do not have time or energy or money enough to open yoga ashram or school where we can teach yoga for free.

Why link_referral on our blog? This is also an experiment to see whether telling people on the internet about yoga, without issuing advts, can generate some traffic. We feel that it has so far got us very few friends who visited us to share their views, ask questions or to gain better insight into yoga. We might discard any referral sites once we find that we have reached a critical level of self sustaining traffic.

asana > surya namaskar

2009-02-05T02:26:00.000-08:00

Surya namaskar is a circular sequence of twelve poses that exercise almost the entire body. Surya namaskar stretches the spine in a series of forward – backward motions done very effortlessly. The poses are as follows:

1. Stand straight, fold hands, exhale deeply.
2. Stretch hands and take them as backwards as you can while very slowly inhaling. This will bend your body backwards.
3. Start bending your body in a slow motion till the stretched hands touch the ground. All this while, you should be slowly exhaling.
4. Take your left leg backwards till it almost stretches. In this position, your palms will be on the ground, supporting the body; the other leg [ie. right leg] will be bent forward and head stretched upwards; and you will be inhaling.
5. Slowly take the bent leg also backwards. Hold both the legs straight and parallel to each other. Now pull the hips up so that the body bends from the waist. In this pose, your toes and palms are supporting the bent body. You have been exhaling after pose 4.
6. Hold the breath. Bring your entire body to the ground in supine position. Your arms will be bent, palms will still be touching the ground, and hips will be slightly pushed upwards.
7. Inhale and raise the upper part of your body taking the head as far upwards as possible.
8. Do pose 5.
9. Do pose 4 with the only difference that the right leg will now be straight and left one bent forward.
10. Do pose 3.
11. Do pose 2.
12. Come back to pose 1.

You might have noticed a pattern in the sequence of these 12 exercise poses: (i) they result in alternate forward and backward bending of spine; (ii) you exhale and inhale alternately; and (iii) inhalation accompanies bending backward, exhalation goes with bending forward, and the middle pose (no. 6) calls for holding the breath.

Once you have mastered the sequence, repeat the entire sequence about ten times. It will give you good exercise of the whole body.

If you happen to be suffering from back pain or hernia or acute high blood pressure, or are in advance stage of pregnancy, please do not perform surya namaskar.

Follow the general yoga guidelines and take all precautions that we have been discussing in many previous posts.

You can do surya namaskar as a stand-alone exercise or do it with other exercises. You might have noticed that surya namaskar encompasses a good number of yoga postures. However, it lacks sideward bending and so a side-bending asana such as ardha-matsyendrasana needs to be done alongwith it to make a complete asana regimen. You can replace the exercises to be done between pranayamas in the regimen for busy people suggested in an earlier post.

Pranayama > kapal bhati > V: some more questions answered

2009-01-31T01:08:00.000-08:00

A reputed book on kapal bhati says, it is not a pranayama.
Strictly speaking, kapal bhati is one of the six cleansing exercises called shatkarma [see yoga terms I], used for cleaning the frontal brain and breath passage. However, you can take it as a pranayama as it is an exercise of breath, if you are not a puritan.
In any case, not many yoga practitioners are master yogis doing yoga according to its tenets. What matters is that you do it and get benefited by it.

What is the correct meaning of the word kapal bhati?
Kapal means skull or forehead; bhati means shine . So, kapal bhati would literally mean imparting glow to the head. According to ancient yoga text, kapal bhati is a cleansing process rather than a pranayama; in that context, and considering that kapal bhati is meant to remove ‘kapha’ problems, imparting glow to the skull perhaps means cleansing the frontal brain and unblocking of flow of fluids associated with it. [I have given some more explanation of kapha in the question on benefits of kapal bhati below.]
In modern parlance you can call it ‘blow for glow’ [sms: blo4glo !].

What are the benefits of kapal bhati? Is there a good enough proof of the benefits or these are mere hearsay?
I advise you to take with a pinch of salt the hundred benefits of specific asanas, pranayamas or other offbeat and alternative medicine systems that people dish out. In many cases such claims are made to lighten pockets of gullible folks, but these could also be well-intentioned hearsay which often leads to exaggeration and does no good to the basic cause.
Having said that, let me repeat that kapal bhati is one of the most beneficial and yet very simple yogic procedures. Besides its obvious beneficial effect on the abdominal and thoracic muscles, organs, glands, nerves, vessels, lymph etc, it has great healing powers experienced by regular practitioners. Don’t know how, but these procedures somehow balance the juices and energies in the body, regenerate aging tissues, stop degenerative processes – thus healing the system and right-pacing it. I know of dozens of patients of chronic ailments who got rid of their ailments with a simple regimen of yogic asanas and pranayamas [done regularly and correctly, to be sure].
According to Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine, the body is healthy only when there is balance between three metabolism types called vata, pitta and kapha. Kapha imbalance is generally displayed by one’s tendency to gain weight, lethargy and fatigue, and lazy digestion. Kapal bhati is found to be very effective in correcting kapha imbalance.
For those who insist on knowing specific benefits of kapal bhati, Baba Ramdev lists the following benefits of kapal bhati: bringing about glow to the face; and curing obesity, constipation, gastric disturbances, acidity, croesus in liver, hepatitis B, diabetes, stomach and uterus problems, cholesterol related problems, allergic problems, asthma, snoring, lack of concentration, and even cancer and AIDS.

Yoga and Muslims: another turn

2009-01-27T23:44:00.000-08:00

A highly reverred Islamic centre, Darul Uloom Deoband, has clarified that doing yoga did no go againt Islam.
You can read the full news here [Daily Times, Lahore].

Pranayama > kapal bhati > IV : more questions

2009-01-23T01:07:00.000-08:00

On a reputed website, the correct method of doing db is stated to be when you do it in fast motion. Another site says, you should do it like a bellow – fast. Will doing kapal bhati in slow pace as advised by you give the benefits that are supposed to accrue by doing it fast?
One branch of yoga believes that kapal bhati MUST be done in fast motions. But that is for yogis, the ones who master yoga. For others, fast movement are fraught with more harm than good in the same way as a casual driver driving car very fast. I have explained elsewhere that exhaling fast and wrongly can lead to problems of nasal tract, throat and eyes. There is also risk of sudden rise in blood pressure and undue load on heart. In fact, there are reports that lung neurons are found damaged in people who have tried to take breath with undue force drawn from lungs.
Doing kapal bhati slow will get you all the benefits.

Are there different types of kapal bhati?
Yes, according to different treatises on yoga. Mostly these arise from variations in taking breath. For lay practitioners, it is the best to do it the correct way, without experimentation.

I am 75 year old. Can I do kapal bhati safely?
Yes, unless you have a grave health problem and you have been medically advised not to do even moderate exercise. 75 years is too young to think this way; pose this question when you turn 90!

For how long should I perform kapal bhati?
If you do it moderately and slowly as recommended in this blog, you can do it even up to 15 minutes. In fact, Baba Ramdev [the renowned yogi who teaches simple yoga procedures on TV channels and through camps] recommends that people suffering from chronic ailments do it for 15 minutes a day. For maintaining overall good health one can do it as recommended in an earlier post or till one can do it very comfortably, say, for five minutes.

I am told, kapal bhati is best done in the open, before sunrise.
Fine as long as you are comfortable with that. The air should be clean and cool, not cold. It should also not lead you to mosquito bite or such other problems.

I smoke. I am told I must quit it before doing any yoga. Can I practice kapal bhati?
Yes, you can, but it is like every day sawing into a tree’s trunk while also watering it. At least take care not to do kapal bhati in a smoke filled room.

Should I do kapal bhati [and other pranayamas] before or after asanas?
After.

Can I do kapal bhati in the evening?
Yes, but you should have taken meals at least 2 hours before doing kb; you should not have taken too much water or other drink within the last one hour; you should not be too tired with the day’s work; and you should not have remained without food all the day.

Yoga originated in Iraq !!

2009-01-22T04:21:00.000-08:00

I quote below from a news item published in Times of Inida on 19th January, 2009.

"Yoga is commonly believed to be a practice started by Sadhus and Sanyasis of India in the ancient times, but it is not true. One will be surprised to know that first yoga exercise
had been introduced in Baghdad in Iraq and later in Iran and Moracco. This was stated by Munger-based Yoga Ashram and Bihar School of Yoga head Swami Niranjananand Saraswati while delivering a lecture at Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library on Sunday.

"From there, he said, this was practised in Christian states and then came to India. ..."

The news item can be seen here.

Pranayama > kapal bhati > III : some questions answered

2009-01-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

When I do kapal bhati, I feel pain under the ribs.
You are likely pressing the belly too hard. Do it less forcefully and reduce the pace of breathing. To start with, do it only 5-7 times in one go, then take rest for 3-4 seconds and proceed. You can increase the number slowly.

While doing kapal bhati, I get heaviness or a feeling of skin being pulled deep inside the nostrils which in turn causes heaviness in eyes and head.
You are using nose to get the force of exhalation. Stop doing it. Practice diaphragmic breathing [as explained in detail in kapal bhati-I].

I get flashes before my eyes when I do kapal bhati.
Seeing flashes is mostly due to pulling of retina [the thin layer inside the eye, responsible for vision] away from its base by the fluid that is there to keep it in place. It occurs when the retina has been torn and detached from its base or it has developed holes. There is a risk of retina detachment getting aggravated if kapal bhati is done using nasal force or too much force anyway. So, remember to do kapal bhati moderately and with force from the belly.

My one nose is often blocked, especially in the morning. How should I do kapal bhati?
Neti is a very useful procedure for opening of blocked nostrils. You can also temporarily balance the flow of air through the nostrils by (1) lying down on a side for five minutes in a way that the blocked nostril is upwards, or (2) doing anulom-vilom a few times. Do not try to open the blocked nostril by doing kapal bhati with extra force.
If your nose is blocked due to flu/common cold, do kapal bhati only if it can be done comfortably. Otherwise, give it a break.
Some people have their nose blocked in the first hour of their getting up. If that is the case with you, please check that there are no items in your surroundings to which you are allergic, or that you do not jump from a cosy bed to a very cold outside.

Replacing yoga teacher? Am I sounding weird?

2009-01-17T05:56:00.000-08:00

After posting a number of posts on this blog, I am asking this question more to myself than you. Am I sounding weird?

Let me clarify some points if I have even remotely given impression that I am here to replace yoga classes. Even if I ever think of doing so, I do not have the required knowledge, resources and perseverance. But I am not thinking of it even in my dreams. There is no doubt that it is easy, safe and scientific to learn yoga [for that matter, anything] from a teacher in person. Perhaps no other medium can teach things better than a human being. More so, when teaching is done in a class: it has added advantages of shared learning and motivation to continue performing yoga. At the same time, I must repeat what I have been saying: the teacher should be one you can depend upon for his/her sincerity and knowledge.

This begs another question: whether yoga can be learnt at all online or using CDs / audio tapes / books? Yes, it can be if the medium is exhaustive in its content and approach. In some CDs, you have an interactive element too. Learning yoga online is possible if the site is thorough in dealing with the subject. Besides, you can clear your doubts using various interactive tools. However, let me repeat my concern again: the site should be genuine in its purpose and should be run by a professional. It should not be a mere copy-and-paste of content found elsewhere or a collection of half-baked information. My experience after surfing a large number of sites is that many sites are in fact a mix of both; in addition they want to sell this un-dependable stuff!

So friends, this blog is not meant to replace anything: it is meant to share with you the knowledge of / information on some aspects of yoga and keep reminding you against what all undesirable is being served in the name of yoga.

More on healing

2009-01-13T04:40:00.000-08:00

Faith healing is much above treating with medicines etc, that’s what experience tells and science – like always, in case of human issues – will follow reluctantly. I have seen umpteen number of times that people with chronic and even terminal diseases are cured when they come in contact with a saintly person. To just give one living example, in Kerala, India, many hundred-thousand people get cured just by embracing Amma.

But what do you say when saintly people are able to cure ailments and pains of infants? Infants, as we are made to understand by today’s science, do not have the baggage of psycho-somatic ailments. They also do not seem to know that some people are saintly, and perhaps they do not think of saints as someone who will cure them. Yet, they are cured by a mere look or touch of a saintly person.

In fact, all animals and plants [maybe, things we consider non-living] seem to be influencing our lives in many, sometimes significant, ways. Maybe, after a hundred years we will know the affect of their blessings and curses on our health and overall well-being [maybe not, because by then we would have ‘conquered’ outer space and unimaginable new frontiers of science and technology]. A hundred years back, did we know that many of our common diseases were caused by viruses? Did we, at that time, know that our bodies created electro-magnetic field?

‘Enough of your rants,’ you might say, so must come back to the points I was trying to make:

Make the best use of yoga for your health - done properly, it will only help you and not hurt in any way;
Do yoga in its entirety [with time, age, physique and life-style limitations, of course], rather than searching for specific asanas and pranayamas for different parts of the body;
Make yoga a way of life, to whatever extent you can [the foremost canons to follow will be to do things in moderation and to try to be in peace with oneself and others];
If possible, learn yoga from people who will teach you yoga with the primary objective of giving you better health, curing your ailments, reducing your pain. From people who can wish you good health from the deep of their hearts. Not from people who are primarily interested in your money.
Believe in your healing powers. If you are an atheist, use your communication with your God for health and well being.
Perhaps your self-healing power and the power to heal others depends on your conduct. So be kind to others, wish good to others, serve others self-lessly.

Yoga: its immense benefits

2009-01-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

There is a tendency to ask what benefits a particular asana or pranayama would give in terms of treating an ailment. Not unnatural, considering our way of looking at our body and our health. We have been conditioned into thinking that different body organs do some particular functions - that some structural or physiological defect in them leads to diseases - that if we treat that particular defect [which we recognise by symptoms or pathological and other tests], we will bring the entire body back to health - and that we need not bother about the body till a new defect arises.

There is hardly any stress given to 'preventive maintenance' of the body, or to heal the body when an ailment takes place. We treat, rather than heal; that is perhaps the reason we are often ill.

Yoga, as it developed over centuries, taught its practitioners to 'service' the body engine, and service it in totality. Totality not only included different organs of the body and different ways of keeping them in good health, it included the spirit and mind also. Only millennia later did we 'scientifically' conclude that mind and spirit indeed played a very important role in overall health.

So, if we are serious about complete health [and if we already are not suffering from very serious organic ailments], talk about health, not whether asana A is good for heart, B for liver and so on. Do adjust yoga procedures according to your lifestyle, time available, age and sex, body type and such other factors, but in trying to do so, do not miss the spirit of yoga.

Another thing to keep in mind. We often use our knowledge of modern medicine to interpret why a particular procedure will be useful to us or not. While theoretically it is OK, applying it without understanding that yogic procedures are not just stand alone physical exercises can lead to wrong inferences, however well-meaning the effort may be. I am saying so also because detailed scientific studies on yoga procedures are still in their nascent stage, and till a significant research goes into yoga, let's not draw half-baked wrong conclusions. Didn't we pooh-poohed accupressure, accupuncture and various alternative systems of medicine till the other day?

The word healing takes us to a plane different from that of treating. It involves one's faith on the doctor, oneself and the medicine. [Why do placebos work wonders in some cases?] It involves arousing the body's vital forces and redundancy. [Don't we have by-pass mechanisms in our body which keep healing the body without our knowing it? Don't we have paired organs so that even if one fails, we have the other to fall back on? Don't we see extra-ordinary capabilities of sense organs of handicapped people?] It involves being in harmony with internal and external environment. I have personally seen faith healing working wonders in a remote Himalayan village. In six years of my stay there, I must have seen a few hundred people with various pains visiting the village grandma, an illiterate woman in her sixties, and returning in five minutes with smile on their lips. What the grandma would do was to rub the paining part with a bit of ash, chant a mantra or something [which she would not part with!] and slap it thrice. The modern notion that paracetamol would treat fever whichever way you give it, treats fever but does not heal the body. In healing, the purity of instrument and your faith in it is even more important than the treatment.

The blabbering could go on, but I must conclude. After all, it is a blog post. Do yoga for your complete health. Learn it from a selfless teacher [even if it is a genuine website] in whom you can rest your faith. This will help you get the magic healing touches of yoga, instead of the plain benefits of physical exercises. If your objective is 'body building' or getting 'six abes'', you will find many excellent exercising regimens, teachers and machines. I assure you, yoga is a very poor exercise regimen and a very unscientific treatment against diseases. Similarly, if you have got attracted to yoga as you could not get rid of one of your diseases by taking medicines, yoga might help but not to the extent it would if you adopted it as a way of life and as a healer.

Amen!

Pranayama > kapal bhati > II : doing this wonderful pranayam the right way

2008-12-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

Please click on the link below to listen to an audio file on the correct way to exhale during kapal bhati and what speed to maintain.

The first example is of exhalation with unusual force and force coming from nose and throat. The second example is of faster than desirable breathing. The third one is the desirable speed and method of exhalation during kapal bhati.

kapal bhati audio file

Some embellishments on this site, and season's greetings!

2008-12-25T20:26:00.000-08:00

We [tech-savvy friend of mine doing the job and I watching] intend to spruce up the site a bit, with some bits of colors and pics here and there. Maybe, in future, we will add audio and video to illustrate things better - but that will have to wait.

Happy Christmas!

Happy new year!

Wish you great health - physical, emotional, spiritual!

Pranayama > Kapal bhati > I: doing it correctly

2008-12-18T22:16:00.000-08:00

a great healer...
... and cure for a dozen sticky ailments

This post is the first of a series on Kapal bhati. In this one, I intend to dwell on the correct method of performing this simple , yet very useful yoga procedure.

Kapalbhati is simply a breathing technique in which you focus on forceful exhalation, while letting the inhalation occur passively.

Having said that, let me tell in detail what is the correct way to do it, so that you get numerous benefits from it and do not hurt yourself unintentionally.

A. Choose a comfortable place, not too hot or too cold, not windy either. Sit comfortably on a mat/carpet/folded sheet, but not on a spongy/fur-filled/stuffed or very soft matting. Relax yourself. In case you feel that sitting for a few minutes will pain your back, sit against a wall or such other prop. Close your eyes.

It will help if you suggest to yourself that you are enjoying the sitting; and if you are able to keep mind free from negative thoughts, worries and tension. If something is worrying you too much, think that no harm/ misfortune will come to you only because you are keeping yourself free from worries for the next few minutes. You can also try to do a bit of meditation by keeping your mind free from stray thoughts. On the other hand, if you are a devout type, you can fill your mind with thoughts of devotion /nearness with God. If you can't do any of these, try to at least bring positive thoughts into your mind.

Now read the next para very carefully; repeatedly if required.

B. Take a deep breath. Hold it for a second and throw it out with force.
If you are doing this for the first time, chances are that you will throw the breath out with the help of muscles inside the nose and partly by squeezing your chest. In kapal bhati, the force is provided by abdominal muscles and the diaphragm [a membrane below the lungs, which when contracted upwards, pushes air out of lungs], not the chest or throat or nostril.
Initially things may mix up; part of exhalation force might come from the nose, throat and chest and only part from the abdomen side. From the very first sitting, you must do the exhalation correctly even if other actions [inhalation, holding of breath, sitting posture] lack perfection. If you cannot exert enough force using abdominal muscles, do it with less force but do not use nose and chest muscles to exert force. Nasal passage is relaxed and passive during kapal bhati.
How much force should you use for exhalation? Not more than just enough to throw the air gush in one go and with a hissing sound. No more! This means, you do not have to press the abdomen too much inside. You also need not keep the belly pressed in after it has pumped the air out. Your body should not shake with jerk during exhalation. Keep your entire body relaxed even when the air is going out of the lungs with force.
Another thing to note is the sound that comes during exhalation. When you throw the air out of lungs, it will cause a hissing sound. This sound, if you use abdominal muscles, will seem to be coming from deep inside; but if you use nasal muscles [ie the wrong muscles], it will come from near the nose.

C. After you are able to do the first exhalation correctly, repeat it three-four times: 1. forced exhalation -- passive inhalation -- 2. forced exhalation -- passive inhalation -- 3. forced exhalation -- passive inhalation -- 4. forced exhalation -- passive inhalation. Check whether you have been able to exhalecorrectly all these times, with force using only abdominal muscles. If you have succeeded, go to the next stage.

D. Now focus on inhalation and holding of the breath. Inhalation, except the initial one is passive in kapal bhati: you have to ignore how the air is going into your lungs. It will be slow, without making hissing sound, without effort.
In kapal bhati, you do not hold breath. It is, as said before, cycles of forced exhalation -- passive inhalation.

The next question is, how fast should we do kapal bhati, and for how long duration. I will discuss these in details in some other post. Right now, let me say this:
Do kapal bhati slowly, not faster than one cycle of exhalation-inhalation in three seconds. You should start with three-four cycles, then a break of a few seconds, then 3-4 cycles, then break... for about one-two minutes. Extend it to three... four ... five minutes, with small breaks in between depending upon your health and age.
If you feel uncomfortable at any stage, chances are that either you did it wrong or beyond your capacity. Slight muscular pain above navel level could occur if you used too much force; exerting more force than required will only hurt the diaphragm inside the belly, it will not make kapal bhati more useful.

If you take care of these precautions [most of them are just common sense, aren't they?], kapal bhati is all win-win. All the best!

revisiting 'Yoga and Religion'

2008-12-17T20:28:00.000-08:00

I had had my views on whether yoga is OK for followers of Christians, Muslims and many other religions. [links to the related posts: one, two, three]

Since this issue seems to be crossing the minds of many people again and again, let me give links to some interesting discussions I found on the net.

*This article argues how yoga can help you deepen your faith in your own religion.
*This one discusses many points of view, and is further commented upon by people with diverse opinions.
*This article is based on interviews with three religious prctitioners - two Catholics and one Jew - and comes to conclusion that it is possible to balance the seemingly opposite concepts and benefit from them.
*This interesting and lively [though not serious] discussion among young people starts with fatwa against yoga and has very many personal comments.
This article tries
*This is a serious argument from an Indian's perspective, how yoga is a science suitable for all.
I will end with a very erudite and serious discourse on yoga, Hinduism and Christianity.

Sorry, some links might break if the original source is removed subsequently.

Yoga for cholesterol

2008-12-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

Cholesterol is a big health concern today, with a large proportion of population having high levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides in blood. The bad cholesterol [LDL] leads to blockage of arteries which in turn results in life-threatening heart and arterial diseases. Triglycerides lead to other ailments too.

There is a great deal of recorded medical evidence of yoga lowering bad glycerides and increasing good ones. A number of studies across the world have proved beyond doubt that constant practice of asanas and pranayams helps in numerous ways, including balancing of lipid levels in blood. One such empirical study by Patanjali Yogpeeth of Swami Ramdev can be seen here.

The practice of yoga destresses the body and improves and oxygen flow: these together may be the reasons why yoga helps in effectively reaching the desirable levels of cholesterol.

One does not need to practice asanas for hours or do difficult asanas to get the desired benefits. The simple yoga procedures given below can balance cholesterol levels even in a few weeks:

kapal bhati pranayam [already desctribed earlier and will be dealt with in detail in forthcoming posts] along with anulom-vilom pranayam,
a collection of simple asanas or surya namaskar [to be given in detail later], and
meditation [which can be done after asanas and pranayams, and even while doing pranayams].

In fact, the simple and quick asana-pranayam regime given earlier would do wonders not only for cholesterol but overall metabolism.

Yoga terms - II [types of yoga]

2008-12-01T00:03:00.001-08:00

This list of terms includes various types of yoga we often hear about.
Some of the yoga types mentioned here are branches of yoga practice as understood in common, ie physical exercises and breath control. These are marked $.
Since yoga in essense connotes the practices that give us body's and mind's overall fitness leading to union with the ultimate, some types of yoga are different paths leading to that union. These are marked &.
A few types of yoga are standard variations introduced by yogis. These are marked *.
Many yoga types that float around are experimentations by individuals, not always backed up by scientific research and/or tradition and/or scriptures. These have been marked here with ?. Many other fancy types invented by yoga teachers and merchants are found in advertisements and over the net; these have not been included here.

$ Ashtanga [= of 8 parts] Yoga. This complete way of life consists of eight sets of actions to be performed by a yogi. These are contained in Sage Patanjali’s treatise on yoga, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. These eight sets are: yama [acting moral], niyama [discipline], asana [yogic postures], pranayama [yogic breathing], pratyahara [withdrawal of senses], dharana [holding of mind; concentration], dhyana [meditation] and samadhi [salvation].
Yama itself consists of five do’s and don’ts: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, celibacy and not having the desire to amass wealth. The five canons of Niyama are: internal and external puirity, contentment/ satisfaction, austerity, study of right text and surrender to God. Pratyahara calls for not succumbing to the lust of the five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch and perhaps sexual deviations.

& Bhakti Yoga: It seeks attainment of the ultimate through bhakti [=devotion]. Includes listening to and singing God’s glory, remembering and chanting His name, doing service of God, taking God as one’s master and friend, complete surrender and so on.

? Bikram Yoga: Started by Bikram Chaudhury some years back, this form of yoga is done in a room heated to 38 degrees C or higher and with 40% or more relative humidity. 26 specific yoga postures are done in a certain order. Also called Hot Yoga.

$ Hatha Yoga: The main form of yoga we deal with: the physical and physiological form. It consists of asanas [physical exercises] and pranayams [breathing exercises]. Part of the more elaborate Ashtanga Yoga.

? Hot Yoga: see Bikram Yoga

* Iyengar Yoga: This branch of yoga was developed by B.K.S. Iyengar in late 1930’s. It is classical Hatha Yoga, but done with the help of props including chairs, straps, blocks and pillows. It is best suited to the beginners and thsose who lack flexibility of joints, muscles and spine.
This yoga focuses on doing the postures correctly and holding them for a longer period. It also lays stress on meditation.

& Jnana [also spelled Gyana/Jyana] Yoga: the knowledge path to salvation

& Karma Yoga: This path seeks enlightenment through right karma [=deeds].

$ Kriya Yoga: a set of asanas, followed by pranayam and focus on yogic energy, so as to purify one’s psyche.

$ Kundalini Yoga: The practices that seek to awaken the kundalini. Kundalini [=coil] symbolizes the centres of energy linked in a coil starting from the base of spine to the brain. Kundalini is activated with the help of proper postures, chanting, meditation, guided relaxation, etc.
Awakening of kundalini is supposed to lead to enormous spiritual achievements to the practitioner.

& Mantra Yoga: use of mantras [=chanting of specific words or phrases] towards attaining yogic powers

$ Patanjali Yoga: see Ashtanga Yoga.

? Power Yoga: This is a regimen of brisk exercises mixing Surya Namaskar [=a group of 12 smoothly flowing stretching yogic exercises] with push ups and such other strenuous exercises.
It is a form of fitness programme rather than yoga in its true sense.

$ Raja Yoga [=king among yogas]: basically the classical Ashtanga Yoga, with emphasis on mind more than physical exercises.
Physical exercises are subservient to the goal of this yoga, that is enlightenment.

* Sahaja [=simple; easy] Yoga: Developed by spiritual guru Ma Nirmala Devi in 1970, this is a form of meditation that leads to self awareness and self-realisation without going through tough regimen of yoga for spiritual gains.
The practioner meditates and becomes thoughless while remaining fully alert.

* Sudarshan Kriya: A form of yogic breathing regimen developed by spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in 1982. In short, the procedure consists of breathing rhythmically, doing bhastrika pranayam and then going into meditation.

$ Surya Namaskar [=sun salutation]: A sequence of 12 forward and backward stretching exercises, done with inhalation and exhalation in sync with the body movement.

$? Tantra [=warp, weave] Yoga: The discipline of tantra has developed into various forms in Budhist, Chinese, East Asian, Tibetan and traditional Indian practice. In essence, it says that the universe is manifestation of divine energy and seeks to channelize the energy of human body for creation and emancipation.
In modern parlance, tantra is sometimes taken as an occult rather than spiritual discipline. Many rituals, including those for appeasing Goddess, have also been associated with tantric cults.
As a discipline of yoga, Tantra Yoga can roughly be equated with Kundalini Yoga.

$ Vinyasa Yoga: A form of yoga in which yogic postures are practiced with a systematic breathing pattern, thus weaving the postures with alternate inhaling and exhaling. Surya Namaskar is one such group of 12 poses done with due consideration to flow of breath while performing individual pose.
The word vinyasa is sometimes used to denote doing any asana sequence keeping in mind the principles of flow of breath.

Yoga: it's so soothing, it feels boring

2008-11-29T00:06:00.000-08:00

All gentle exercises [in fact all such activities] are prone to boredom. After all, the nervous tissue that makes our brain and sense organs wants to experience stimulation; gentle exercises by their very nature do not provide that type of sensual stimulus.

So, after some days of asanas, pranayams and other yoga procedures, you are likely to feel that things have become quite routine. Once the initial excitement goes down OR the discomfort or pain because of which you started yoga comes down OR you find the poses too simple and kiddish to be taken seriously OR you experience some pain or discomfort after starting yoga, YOU WILL NEED TO GOAD YOURSELF TO CONTINUE YOGA. In some cases one starts experiencing the benefits of yoga on body and/or mind and/or spirit from the very beginning; if this happens to you, do use this positive feeling to continue yoga. But if you have not got the desired benefits, keep doing yoga and trying to standardise your poses and procedures. You can seek expert advice, including through this blog [please post your queries to yogaadvice@gmail.com]. But in any case, continue yoga for at least three months before deciding whether to continue it further or not.

You can also do the following to make yoga more interesting:
a- doing yoga in groups
b- playing a soft music while doing yoga
c- joining yoga camps periodically
d- teaching yoga to children
e- doing your daily prayers while doing yoga
f- going to the next stage: experiencing joy and spiritual strength through yoga

Yoga in times of stress

2008-11-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

These are times when people are suffering from stress, mostly stress caused by economic meltdown. This stress can be killing, literally: stress is known to cause and aggravate a large number of problems including those of heart, blood pressure, head, digestion, glands, kidney, joints... Some of them are what we call psycho-somatic disorders and some can be directly emotional and psychic.

Even worse is that this cycle of global stress is affecting the youth more than the old as the youth see their present and future enveloped in darkness.

Yoga and its sister, meditation, are among the most potent preventives and curatives, both, against stress. Research has proven, and experience of thousands has shown, that these practices immediately relieve stress and improve the ability to think clearly. These also very effectively relieve tension in the heart and blood vessels, reduce nervous irritability and reduce blood pressure.

Obviously, doing yoga and meditation will not directly get a management graduate his or her job back if their company has busted, but even in such dire situations, these will help him maintain a stress and anxiety free, healthy life, improve their employability vis-a-vis those stressed, and let them think better how to come out of the situation.

Which yoga?
If you are new to yoga, I suggest that you start with simple relaxation exercises; practice anulom-vilom and kapal bhati pranayams; sit calm and try to concentrate on a physical object / God / nothing: you can do these as many times in the day as possible - in office, at traffic lights, at home, whenever stress builds up. Since stress has the tendency to come up again and again, have positive attitude and faith in life [and God if you are a believer] to get out of stress more permanently. [I am not venturing here into how to use spirituality to live a completely stress-free life, because that seems to be beyond this blog.]
Have a regular yoga schedule, starting with a very simple, easy and small regimen as described in an earlier post on this blog.

Yoga is not for Muslims

2008-11-22T21:48:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, Malaysia's National Fatwa Council - a top religious body - issued an edict, saying it is blasphemous for Muslims to practice yoga. [news report here]

Without meaning any disrespect to the Council or Islam one can say, it is unfortunate that so many people will not be able to enjoy the benefits of a superbly healing system. Though I have usually been critical of playing with the basic tenets of yoga for the sake of selling it, I will welcome if a new form of yoga [give it a totally non-Sanskrit name if that helps] evolves, which makes use of good points of yoga in such a way that it does not hurt anybody's religious sentiments, however conservative they may be.

Yoga means joining; it should not be used as a tool to divide the humanity.

Yoga fakes and money spinners

2008-11-13T06:01:00.000-08:00

I have already spoken my mind about the undesirable trend of fleecing gullible people by offering them yoga. I have surfed the net a bit more and am in a position to help people identify outright cheats and fakes, half-educated yoga teachers and non-standard books/audio-visual aids/web resources and unnecessary goods on yoga. You are likely to find fakes with the identities listed below:

My sincere apologies to yoga teachers and followers and those selling yoga goods, who are doing it free or charging a reasonable/nominal sum and with the aim to benefit people with yoga, if they happen to have any similarity with the following identities.

1. I ADVERTISE YOGA TO THE LEVEL OF FANTASY AND THEN LURE PEOPLE TO BUY IT FROM ME.

2. MY FRIEND IS ONE STEP AHEAD OF ME; SHE SCARES PEOPLE ABOUT THEIR HEALTH AND THEN OFFERS SOLUTIONS THAT ONLY HER YOGA CAN PROVIDE.

3. I AM A CELEBRITY WITH GOOD HEALTH AND FIGURE. TELLING THAT I DO YOGA AND MEDITATION DAILY GETS ME GOOD PRESS.

4. I TEACH YOGA AFTER I DID A COURSE FROM SOMEONE WHO DID A COURSE FROM SOMEONE.

5. I AM STILL BETTER; I STARTED TEACHING YOGA AFTER ATTENDING SOME CLASSES AND LEARNING SOME FROM THE WEB AND A BOOK.

6. I HAVE INVENTED WEIRD FORMS OF YOGA BECAUSE THEY SELL. SEEN NAKED YOGA, WINE YOGA, SEX YOGA, WATER YOGA, HOT YOGA ...?

7. I HAVE GONE A FEW STEPS AHEAD: I HAVE PATENTED A SEQUENCE OF YOGA POSES.

8. I SELL CURIOUS MERCHANDISE FOR YOGA, STARTING FROM YOGA MATS, INCENSE STICKS, NETI POT, FURNITURE AND YOGA MUSIC TO UNDERGARMENTS SPECIALLY SUITED FOR YOGA.

9. I HAVE WRITTEN BOOKS MIXING YOGA WITH MYSTERIOUS CULT PRACTICES. I BET, THEY SELL BETTER THAN DULL YOGA BOOKS.

10. WHY SHOULD WE NOT SELL YOGA WHEN PEOPLE ARE READY TO BUY? WHY GIVE IT FREE? THEN, PEOPLE MIGHT HARM THEMSELVES IF THEY DO NOT DO IT BEFORE OUR EXPERT EYES. OUR JARGON COUCHED ADVICE IS THE MOST BELIEVABLE.

11. I INTERPRET YOGA IN TERMS OF MODERN MEDICINE [THOUGH I HARDLY KNOW MUCH ABOUT IT] IN SUCH A WAY THAT WHAT I SAY MAKES PEOPLE INSTANTLY GO FOR IT.

12. I HAIL FROM INDIA. THIS HELPS ME SELL MY PRODUCT AS ORIGINAL YOGA.

13. I KEEP MY HEAD CLEAN-SHAVED, MY FRIEND KEEPS LONG FLOWING BEARD, MY ANOTHER [LADY] FRIEND WEARS ORANGE ROBES AND PUTS ON A DOT ON HER FOREHEAD: THESE GIVE US A BRAND IMAGE OF A YOGI. PEOPLE FEEL, WE HAVE ACQUIRED GREAT SPIRITUAL AND METAPHYSICAL POWERS.

14. MY AMERICAN FRIEND ONCE WENT TO INDIA AND LEARNT YOGA FROM SAGES SOMEWHERE IN THE HIMALAYAS. HE SAYS, HE ONLY KNOWS THE TRUE SPIRIT OF YOGA.

Yoga and spine health -II

2008-11-10T22:11:00.000-08:00

This post deals with doing yoga procedures in a spine-safe way when there already exists some problem in the spine.

Since asanas focus a good deal on bending and stretching of the body, they may result in spine problems if not done properly. In our temptation to show to others, or to ourselves, that we can accomplish even the hardest of the yoga postures, we sometimes overdo the bending. Or, we do not listen to the precautions, thinking of them as nagging pieces of advice.

Whatever the reason, if we have a problem in our spine, we should take precautions and we should do only those asanas that would not aggravate the problem. We can think of starting the spine-strengthening asanas after the spine has been cured of existing problem(s).

The first, general, caution can be: do not bend sideways or twist the body if you have a backache/ spondylitis problem or any medical problem with spine. Even while bending forward or backward, do it slowly and cautiously. Do not bend forward at acute angles. Do not bend spine to lift things, especially heavy things; rather, bend your knees.

Take care of your posture, both while sitting and while standing. Do not sit or stand on one pose constantly for a long time. When sitting, use a back-rest, ie do not sit without supporting the back.

If you have back pain but no serious spine problem such as slip-disc or degeneration of inter-vertebral tissues, do these safe exercises:

1. arm rotation and head press: This set of four exercises is very helpful in relieving spondylitis , shoulder pain and upper back pain. [However if you have had a muscle pull in shoulder or arms, avoid this.]
Stand straight; stretch hands to the sides and bend them from the elbows, touching shoulder with fingertips.
Now rotate the elbows in clock-wise and anti-clockwise directions 3-4 times each, slowly.
Next, bend your left arm above your head to the right ear. Hold fingers of left hand with the right hand fingers and let both the hands pull each other. Hold it for a few seconds. Do this with the opposite hands.
Take the hands to the back of your head. Entangle fingers of both the hands and pull, like before towards their sides. Hold it for a few seconds.
Now take the hands to the forehead and hold fingers and pull, like given above. Hold for a few seconds.

2. backward and forward bend: This set of exercises relieves even chronic lower-back pain if not caused by a serious problem.
Stand straight and slowly bend backward - as much as you can comfortably can. Then slowly bend forward, by a lesser amount. Hold in both the conditions for a few seconds.
When there is no pain or heaviness in the spine, these simple exercises can be followed by a set of one forward bending and one backward bending asana. Start with doing an asana slowly, for a small time and holding the pose for a small duration.

Doing pranayama is mostly safe, except that sitting for a long duration might lead to back tiredness or pain. If the spine aches or feels heavy, take a small rest, take a small walk and resume the pranayama.

Yoga terms - I [words in common use]

2008-11-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

I am giving here a list of terms related to yoga for general comprehension. As should be obvious, it is not at all necessary to learn them or to even know their meaning, but when you encounter these Sanskrit words, you should know what they are referring to.

This is list - I in a series of lists. This list contains common words associated with yoga in general. The list - II deals with types of yoga and has now been posted as a new post.

Words with or without an A at the end of a word usually mean the same. In English, A is often added at the end to emphasise the pronunciation of the last consonant M or N [eg. pranayama=pranayam].

Here it goes:

Asana [=seat/posture/pose]: a yoga position, also called yogasana

Ashrama [camp]: place where saints / yoga practitioners live permanently or temporarily

Ashtanga [=8-limbed] yoga: the eight-fold path of yoga as outlined by sage Patanjali. The eight limbs are: yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana and samadhi [see details in yoga terms - II]

Aum [or om]: considered the universal sound or cosmic vibration. Its repetition as a mantra helps in concentration and meditation.

Chakra [=circle/wheel]: one of the seven energy centers supposed to be lying along the confluence of the nadis (energy channels) along the spine up to the brain. The seven chakras are: muladhara, swadhisthana, Manipur, anahata, vishuddha, ajna and sahasrara

Dhyana: meditation

Guru [=teacher]: a spiritual teacher

Hatha [=forceful] yoga: refers to the physical part of yoga, to differentiate it from the spiritual part

Kriya [=activity/action]: a yogic procedure

Kundalini [=coil]: a chain of chakras, supposed to rest along the spine, with human being’s life force. Physically, it can be very roughly equated with the central nervous system.

Mantra: a sacred sound that is uttered repeatedly to achieve physical or spiritual gains

Mudra [=gesture]: one of the many hand gestures that channelize energy within the mind and body

Nadi [=channel]: energy and life channels in the body. In physical terms, some like to relate nadi to nerve.

Om [or aum]: considered the universal sound or cosmic vibration. Its repetition as a mantra helps in concentration and meditation.

Patanjali: the author of the yoga treatise, Yoga Sutra

Prana [=life]: breath or life force

Pranayama [=directing the life force]: one of the techniques of breathing and breath control to regulate energy flow in the body

Shatkarma [=6 activities]: the six yogic techniques of purification of the body. The six procedures are: neti, dhauti, nauli, basti, trataka and kapalbhati.

Yoga [=union/joining together]: an oriental discipline aimed at achieving union of bodily and spiritual well-being by physical exercise, purification, meditation and good conduct. In the West, yoga is often used to refer to the physical exercises including asanas, pranayamas, some cleansing exercises and meditation.

Yogi: a practitioner of yoga

Yoga: a tool can be a weapon!

2008-11-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

This is my reaction to the reports that a sadhvi [= a female saint, a rough equivalent of nun in Hinduism] in India has been accused of terrorism and because of her mastery of yoga, lie detector tests failed on her.

First, the practice of yoga did not cleanse the sadhvi of devilish thoughts if she had been nurturing them before, and yoga definitely did not induce kind thoughts in her.

Second, the sadhvi used yoga to dodge the lie detector machines – the ones depending on palpitation, perspiration and other neuro-chemical reactions in the body when one tells a lie.

As I mentioned somewhere else, yoga is not cure-all for all bodily or emotional or spiritual ailments, though it does heal the body-mind-spirit when the practitioner uses it to do so. But what do you do when somebody uses it for destruction? What do you do when the so useful kitchen knife and the life-giving injection needle is used for killing someone? It is a case of using the best tools as destructive weapons.

Though in a negative way, this instance also gives a public proof that yogic practice has a great influence on body metabolism and the way the body reacts to external stimuli. When you practice yoga for a long time, the brain, the nervous system [especially the autonomic part of it, which is responsible for stress, anger, impulsive reactions] and the endocrine system [the glands, which secrete hormones] cool down. Yes, this action of yoga seems to have helped the sadhvi in coolly planning terrorist actions; her body reactions to the lie detector machines were only incidental.

I wish that the sadhvi comes clean. What I said about yoga above would still hold true. Let us use yoga to cleanse us, heal us.

Yoga and overall health

2008-10-29T21:15:00.001-07:00

I have been advising people to perform yogic exercises for overall health, not focussing on different ailments. Of course, when you develop an ailment, you should focus on the exercises pertaining to that ailment. If you shed laziness and/or disbelief in the benefits of yoga early in life and when you are healthy, there is likelihood that you will develop very few organic ailments.

In this blog, time permitting, I will keep adding the proven benefits of yoga based on research and long experience. If you are living in India or the USA, you can have many occasions to watch Swami Ramdev perform yoga live; in his yoga camps you will find a score of people getting up to narrate their experiences of having got rid of many chronic diseases that allopathy could not cure. Knowing the power of yoga, I assure you that these are not stage-managed. On the other hand, I find a large number of websites giving pseaudo-scientific reasoning to show why and how various yoga exercises benefit us. This unnecessary promotion, I believe, leads to people becoming unsure of yoga. Another group of people/websites measure yoga in terms of 'modern' medical science. We must understand that yoga is a knowledge that has been built over centuries by careful examination and traditional validation. It deals with body-mind-spirit as a whole which needs to be treated/cured/healed as one, not as a sum of stomach, heart, femur, eye, etc. [Perhaps that is the reason it is yoga, ie. joining together.]

So, though I will keep sharing my own and others' knowledge on disparate benefits of yoga, I will pray to all to kindly treat yoga as a holistic healing system rather than an alternate system of medicine inferior to modern medicine. Forgive the repetition, but I must stress this point.

Yoga and spine health –I

2008-10-20T03:36:00.000-07:00

This post deals with maintaining the health of spine with the help of yoga.

Healthy people, especially the youth, often ignore spine health because when there is no pain or heaviness in spine, this part of the body is taken for granted. After all, except when it is injured, the spine does not bother us unlike aching teeth, sight problems, skin rashes, fever, runny nose or sore throat.

But spine health is of paramount importance. The spine supports the middle and upper parts of the body, and equally significantly it carries the main nerve cord of the body. Its composition – a series of bones, with pads in between them, nerves branching out across the bones and muscles attached between the bones and other body parts - makes it quite flexible and eminently suitable for various body movements, but makes it that much weaker than a single bone. So, any injury or deformity in it not only makes movements difficult and painful, it might result in damage to the nerves in and around it.

The best way to keep your spine healthy is to keep it flexible. An unexercised spine turns rigid over time and an external or internal jerk to it [and there are plenty of occasions for a jerk] causes the spinal bones to misalign, the pads to tear or swell, the ligaments and muscles to twist and break. An unexercised spine is also like an ill-lubricated machine and undergoes wear and tear faster.

Yoga asanas pay special attention to bending of the spine. Asanas are special in that they do not put unnecessary force on the spine and yet are immensely beneficial. They also take care that bending activities of different types balance each other out.

The main types of asanas for overall spine health are: [very difficult asanas not given; they are really not needed required unless you want to be an advance practitioner of yoga]

1. a complete set of bending asanas:
Surya Namaskar: sun prayer; set of 12 postures alternately bending forward and backward [mid-difficult]

2. forward bending exercises [choose one of them but then do one of the backward bending exercises given below]
A. Halasana: plough pose; bending entire body inwards in lying down position [mid-difficult]
B. Padahastasana: forward bending; hands touching the feet while standing [difficult]
C. Paschimottanasana: forward bending; hands touching the feet while sitting [difficult]

3. backward bending exercises [choose one of them but then do one of the forward bending exercises given above]
A. Shalabhasana: locust pose; lying with face down and raising legs up [mid-difficult]
B. Bhujangasana: cobra pose; lying down with face downwards, and raising the entire front like cobra hood [mid-difficult]
C. Ushtrasana: camel pose; lying with head up, raising middle portion [mid-difficult]
D. Chakrasana: total bending backwards while standing [difficult]
E. Dhanurasana: bow pose; lying with face down and bending legs as well as torso upwards [mid-difficult]

Yoga for armed forces in India

2008-10-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

A news report in today's paper says, a ten-day yoga camp is being organised for India's para-military forces. Over a few weeks, between 300 and 400 thousand persons are to be trained. After training in camps, to be imparted by Swami Ramdev, the personnel will train their colleagues posted in remote and border areas.

Besides helping the 'jawans' in maintaing all-round health, yoga is expected to help them cope with stress arising due to difficult life-situations, having to deal with crime and cruelty and living away from family.

The report says, this initiative is being taken after long discussions on the benefits of yoga for police and military forces, spanning over more than a year. My comment is, better late than never.

Sarvangasana: one of the best yoga postures

2008-10-11T23:45:00.001-07:00

But not for everyone!

I am writing this post to caution yoga enthusiasts against doing asanas [=yogic exercises] that do not suit them, and I repeat caution ad nauseum, don't I? Do not be carried away with claims of a thousand benefits of a particular asana. If you throw caution to the wind, you are likely to damage your body in more ways than one. I know of many people who have suffered by doing standard poses in bad ways, doing asanas that do not suit them and doing senseless exercises to impress others with their body-bending feats.

In simple terms, this asana is standing on shoulders. Lie down straight and raise legs till they are about 70-80 degrees up. Then slowly raise the entire body – the thighs, lower back and the upper back. When the body is upside down and resting on the shoulders, support the back with your bent arms.
When starting to lift the body, exhale slowly and keep doing it till you stand on the shoulder. Inhale slowly and then take breath normally . Hold yourself in this position for half a minute and slowly come down to lying posture, inhaling all the way. You can raise the holding time to three-four minutes or as long as you are comfortable, whichever is less.
Always remember to do matsyasana [=fish posture] after sarvangasana. In this posture, you lie down on the mat, slowly lift your middle part of the body and support this posture with elbows. It is be done slowly, without jerks, and for about half a minute leading to one or two minutes.

Savangasana [= exercise for the all organs] is one of the most beneficial asanas. It rejuvenates the entire body. Commonsense tell us that in this posture the neck is bent so much forward that the thyroid gland is pressed hard, blood flow reverses, the central nervous system bends and gets copious blood supply, and the muscles of shoulder, back and arms get heavy exercises. Even if this asana did only this much, it has the potential of exercising the body’s circulatory, nervous and endocrine systems. But yoga-asanas are integrated exercises that help in many other ways – some of their benefits are being discovered by modern medicine through sophisticated instruments and diagnostic tools. Specific benefits of this asana [besides the overall health and rejuvenation] include incrased activity and vanishing of fatigue, improved pancreatic, thyroid and sex-gland functions, reversal of hernia, improved liver and renal activity, facial glow and lessening of age-related wrinkles.

But sarvangasana is not for all. It should not be performed by people with hypertension, any heart or brain ailment, weak lungs, spondylitis, back pain and glaucoma. Weak bodies should consult the doctor before performing this asana. If you are above 40 and not a yoga practitioner for long, avoid this asana. Even if you had been practicing it for ages, reduce its duration after around 50 years of age and consult your doctor. It is a no-no for pregnant women after three months of pregnancy. Sturdy people also should not do it when sick. Even if you are healthy in all senses, do it for not more than 3-4 minutes, starting with about 30 seconds and slowly increasing it. If you feel flush of blood on your face, slowly come down and do not practice this asana for longer than this duration. Do not come back to the lying posture in a jerk.

Your yoga teacher: is he/she worth it?

2008-10-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

A yoga teacher can be one who has learnt yoga exercises and has now taken up yoga teaching as a profession/business because he/she has smelled money in it. On the other end of the spectrum can be a teacher who is teaching yoga to others so as to share his/her knowledge of this marvelous wisdom of healing so as to make others healthy in body-mind-spirit.
All shades of teachers will be there and all will have a purpose.The purpose of this post is not to denigrade teaching of yoga for money making, but to help you understand whether you are getting the great benefits of yoga or have ended up doing some exercises with exotic names.

I am giving a checklist here to judge whether you are getting the right lessons. I pray that you use these to judge the teacher / lessons only to get the best from yoga, not to develop an ill-will for the person who is teaching you. If you are not satisfied, search for a better teacher, even if online.

Only a small part of yoga is muscle exercise. Do you know that it is part exercise, part deep exercise, part body cleansing, part body healing, part mind healing, part spiritual healing. Are you getting anything beyond the exercise regimen?
Yoga is in essense a science of healing, and healing needs qualities in the teacher that transcend the mere science of treatment of ailments. Does the yoga teacher practise yoga in his/her life or is he/she only a 'teaching technician of yoga'?
Can the teacher answer your queries; is he/she open minded towards criticism? Is he/she sensitive to your special needs?
If he/she is a westerner, does he/she appreciate the basis of the oriental thought on healing?
If he/she is from India or nearby areas, is he showing off his association with the orient to sell yoga? Does he/she have the knowledge of biology, if not medicine?
Does he/she have a knowledge of the working of the mind?
Does he/she have sensitivity towards various faiths?

Yoga in schools: Hindu pollution in America?

2008-10-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

1. Yoga is not Hinduism
A news item has appeared in many newspapers reporting that parents have protested teaching of yoga in a school in New York, saying yoga is a Hindu ritual and so it cannot be allowed in Christian schools.

I do respect the sentiments of the parents. I must do so, and more so after having tried to empathise with Hindus and Christians both in the recent [and sporadically recurring] Hindu-Christian problems in India.

But, pray, yoga has do with Hinduism nearly as much as a light bulb has to do with Christianity or modern numbers with Islam. Yoga originated and grew as a way of healing in India and it was discovered and nurtured by Hindu saints, but it is only a way of healing one's body and soul [and mind, in between the two]. Some rituals of Hindus have praying postures derived from yoga, but I think any religion would welcome postures that give you peace and allow you to concentrate on God.

Believe me, yoga is for cleaning, not for polluting. Not the least, polluting a religion.

2. Yoga is Hinduism, then what?
Suppose you don't buy my argument above. You feel that yoga, having been invented and nurtured by Hindus, is a Hindu way of exercising. You also have witnessed yoga teachers recommending chanting of sounds that clearly are part of Hindu rituals.
Agreed that in many respects yoga is laced with Hinduism and following another religion's rituals is not allowed in Christianism. My only submission here is, why not adopt good things wherever they are available and leave aside whatever is not permitted in one's religion? This way, you do not do anything that is not permitted in your religion and still get the healing benefits of yoga.

Neti

2008-09-23T03:44:00.000-07:00

Jala-neti or simply neti, is cleansing the nasal passage with water, nothing else.

Its benefits…

The benefits of neti are so many that once you start doing neti regularly, you might wonder why this disarmingly simple thing didn’t come to you before. If you have been suffering from sinusitis, allergy and headache [including migraine], you will get immediate – and also permanent – relief. This simple procedure also prevents nasal infections, including common cold and flu, in a natural way and this in turn helps build resistance to many pathogens. It is reported to be highly effective in lessening asthma and preventing hay fever. Unsubstantiated reports have come to my notice about its usefulness in curing certain types of myopia, ear problems, even hysteria. For the nasal cavities ruined by smoking, neti is a great rejuvenator. All this without any side-effects of modern medicine and without having to spend so much on medical consultations.

I will not talk of psychological and spiritual benefits that you might have. In fact, if you have been practicing yogic exercises and meditation, the benefit will be eminently synergistic.

Must I buy a neti pot, and must I spend on learning it?

To do neti, people often prescribe a neti pot. A neti pot is a pot with nozzle that fits a nostril. If neti pot does not pinch your pocket, go buy it, but it is not at all necessary that you do neti with only a neti pot. You can do it with a slight variation with a slanted tumbler [though this will need some practice]. You can start doing neti safely if you take the precautions given here. You do not need to join a yoga class to learn only neti.

Doing neti the first time…

Take more than half a litre [2 tumblers] clean water, heat it to make it lukewarm, put a pinch of salt in it, stir it. Taste it: it should be as salty as tears. Beyond the commonsense that it should not hurt the soft inner skin of the nose with heat or saltiness, don’t worry too much; you will come to know of the right temperature and salinity after a few trials.

Fill half the tumbler [ or the neti pot], stand at the wash basin, tilt your head to a side. Hold the tumbler/pot so that the water touches your upper nostril. With the other hand, close your lower nostril and try to pull some water through the upper one. If the water feels warm, add some cold water. If it irritates the inside of your nose, you possibly need to put some more salt in it. In 4 out of 5 cases, when you do this for the first time, you may feel some irritation. If that goes instantly after you have removed water, it is perfectly natural. Note that the right temperature will be that in which water does not feel warm or cool deep inside the nose.

All right. Slowly push some more water into the upper nostril and let the water come out of the lower nostril. Once you have done it a number of times, you are ready to do neti.

Standard procedure…

In simple form of neti [and we should generally be doing only this form], you let the water go inside the nasal cavity through one nostril and let it come out of the other nostril. The flow is provided by slanting the head and keeping the water level high on the pot. When you do it with a slanting tumbler, you have to pull water inside slightly so that the flow starts; when it comes to a standstill, pull water again.

Once you have used up half the water, slant the head to the other side and repeat the same with the other nostril.

After neti, let the water drip out of the nose. Push it out with slight force to further dry the nasal passage. If after you are finished with neti, one or two drops of water come out of the nose, it is natural.

Do’s and don’t’s…

Neti is best done after sometime of your rising in the morning.
Do not force water in or out; it will hurt the inner lining of the nasal passage.
Do not force yourself to do the standard procedure. If it is taking some time, let it be. Yoga forbids force or extremes.
In cases of high degree of congestion, as during flu, avoid forcing neti. Do it if you can do it comfortably.
Immediately after neti, do not go out in cold wind, do not smoke, and do not use strong smelling perfumes or incense.

A small yoga regimen for busy people

2008-08-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

I am giving here a small set of exercises derived from yoga for those not able to do yogic exercises for long duration becasue of lack of time, environment or fitness issues. It will keep your system in good shape and arrest any systemic decay except if you are abusing your body too badly.
Doing yogic exercises at ease constitute sahaja yoga or easy yoga. Yoga does not want you to over-exert, even if you are a guru for years. The golden rule is: do more moderately, for less time and slower than what your body permits, and do it joyfully.
The entire regimen should be over in 10-25 min.
I am giving notes in do's and don'ts form [click on 'read more' below]. You can find video for doing these pranayamas at the link given in the left column.
Here you go!

easy warm-up: 1-3 min
1. kapal bhati pranayama: 3-6 min
transition exercises: 1/2 - 1 min
2. anulom-vilom pranayama: 3-6 min
transition exercises: 1/2 - 1 min
3. bhramari pranayama: 1 min
4. udgitha pranayama: 1 min
transition exercises: 1/2 - 2 min
5. meditation: optional: 1/2 - 3 min

Easy warm-up [1-3 minutes only]
Find a place that is not too hot or cold or windy. Clothe yourself in comfortable, light clothes. Stand erect barefeet on the ground [if it is rough or is too cold or hot, use a blanket or rug] and move your limbs up, down and in sides. Move your body whichever way you want. If your body permits, do jogging without moving ahead [just jump up and down and move your arms too]. If you can do more, take side swings and twist your body. Even if you can, do not do these side or forward-backward movemtns in jerks and do not do more than your body can permit. If you have had fracture, recent sprain or any such body injury, be extra careful. If you are old, suffering from back pain or arthritis, or have quit exercises for long, take even more care.
Fill your mind with happiness. Even if you are having a bad time, try to bring smile on your lips and make it genuine. If you can, dance [even if you don't know], and dance in joy arising out of the feeling that you have these few moments with yourself - and for these moments only you exist, only you. If you believe in the almighty, try to link yourself with Him in the way your faith has taught you. Make this warm up a celestial dance event every moring.

At the end of warm-up session, sit in a very comfortable posture on a hard surface on which a rug or blanket is placed. Cross-leg with spine straight is the best posture. If you suffer from back pain, take support from wall/ bed behind you and try to sit without rest when the pain has gone. This time is for letting your breath come to normal; and if you have sweated, to let your body cool down to normal temperature. Sit in this fashion for about half minute.

1. Kapal bhati pranayama [3-6 minutes, but initially 1/2 to 1 min only]
Make the sitting posture more formal: cross legs, straighten spine, stretch arms and let the back of your palms rest on the knees [but if that looks tense, relax them and let them fall on your thigh], open all the fingers and then bend the index finger to let its tip touch the base of your thumb.
Now take a deep breath. It should be long breath but without force. When the lungs get a feeling of fullness, exhale with force through the nose. The force has to come not from the nostrils nor the throat but lungs. Your chest and upper stomach have to pull in to give that force. So, inhalation is slow and with expansion of chest and upper abdomen [where lies the diaphragm, a membrane that assists in respiration] and exhalation is forceful and with contration of chest and upper abdomen.
Do this complete set of breathing-in-breathing-out twenty, to start with. This should take less than a minute. Slowly increase it to 5-6 minutes.
Here, let me give a bit of caution: Do not throw the air out with so much force that the inner linings of nostril or the throat are hurt. Initially, do it for a small time and if you get heaviness / any tingling sensation inside nose / coughing tendency / hiccough, stop it. That is the sign that you are either doing it wrong or too fast or too forcefully or more than what your body is presently prepared for. Raise the time to 5-6 minutes very slowly, over many days and weeks.
When you have stabilised for some days and reached 2-3 minutes of pranayama, you can start using this time in healing yourself. For this, while doing the pranayama, think of your body ailments ranging from those that have haunted you since your childhood to the ones you have acquired now. Start with the one you want to cure the first. Feel that the body is healing itself and the damage in that part of the body is getting reduced. Feel it as intensely as you can, but don't fool yourself: you are interested in real results and not a delusion. Where the damage is irreperable by any means, or an infection has set in and must complete its course or in case of a physical damage, the healing may be limited to getting better resistance, better pain management, partial regeneration of tissues, etc. Sometimes, the symptoms of the ailment initially feel more troublesome; it is because you have become more conscious about that ailment. Over time, you will find that your thinkign has helped the body heal itself.

Transitional exercises [half to one minute]
You can do stretching of shoulder, neck and back muscles by bending back and forth, sideways and roundabout [but if you have spondylytis or an injury, avoid these or do them very very moderately]. Or, you can get up and do half a minute's totally unorganised exercises as you did during the warm-up session.

2. Anulom-vilom pranayama [3-6 min, but starting with 1 minute or so]
This is another simple, even simpler, pranayama. For this, sit comfortably as told earlier, spread the palm of your right hand, bend the index and middle fingers, take this hand above the nose in a way that your thumb touches one side and the ring finger touches the other. Now, take a deep breath. Holding the breath, press the right nostril with thumb and exhale with the left nostril. Once done that, inhale with the same nostril, hold the breath for a moment and lift the thumb while pressing left nostril with ring finger. Now exhale.
What you have done is inhaled from one nostril and exhaled that air from the other nostril, and repeated the same in the opposite direction.
Once you start doing this inhalation-exhalation with alternate nostrils, you will not need to hold the breath in between inhaling and exhaling, and the process will become smooth.
Do this exercise with comfortably long breaths. Keep in mind that the chest and upper abdomen should expand when inhaling and constrict when exhaling, thus helping the lungs to take/give out long breaths.
Start with doing as many sets of in-out as you can comfortably do: maybe ten or twenty. Slowly increase it up to about 6 minutes.
As in the case of kapal bhati, you can try to devote this time in healing your body further or any other useful mind activity such as praying, making a resolve to achieve your goal or resolving to improve confidence/personality.

Transitional exercises [half to one minute]
You can do any type of light exercise as told before.

3. Bhramari pranayama [1 minute or more]
Staring with one or two courses, you can increase it to 2-3 minutes, but if you have less time, stop at one minute.
Sitting comfortably, close eyes. stretch both arms forward and bend them at elbows, bring the fingers above eyes and forehead. Letting the index fingers your forehead [they might also touch each other], take the thumbs over ear holes. Bend the other fingers. Now slightly press the index fingers on the forehead, shut the ears with thums and take a deep breath. Exhale the air slowly through nose, making a humming sound. Your mouth, eyes and ears are closed. Repeat it about 4 times in one minute.
You can take the breath slightly fast but you need to exhale very slowly and let the passing air make a long, unbroken, humming sound that tapers naturally as the air pressure reduces. Do not try to force the last traces of air out of lung; it will lead to hiccough.

4. Udgitha pranayama [1 minute or more]
Sitting comfortably, stretch arms, open palms, bend index finger and rest the backs of palms on the knees. If that makes the posture uncomfortable, let the arms limp and palms rest on thighs. Close eyes, take a deep breath and let the air come out slowly through mouth while making a droning sound. Like in bhramari, let the air come out without too much force and let it give rise to a long, tapering drone.
Do it for about one minute as in the case of bhramari.

Transitional exercises [half to one minute]
As before. If you are tired, take some rest lying down or even sitting.

5. Meditation [half minute or more] optional
While sitting comfortably, try to just not think anything, not see anything before your eyes, not pay heed to whatever you are hearing. Let the body relax as much as it can, let the breath flow very slowly and smoothly. Be in this state for as much time as you can, giving yourself an upper limit of about three minutes.
Even if you are unable to control your thoughts at all, do sit in this posture while observing other disciplines ie relaxing the body, breathing slowly, not analysing the sounds that fall on your ears. Try to be thoughtless even if you can do so perfectly well for ten seconds. Don't mind if you could do so for one minute today, not at all tomorrow, for 10 seconds tomorrow and for half minute the next day. Just do it.

Some more words of caution for pranayamas and other yogic exercises:
Do these exercises in the morning before breakfast. You can do these any time during the day but you should not be very much tired, and should not have eaten anything for about 3 hours.
You can do these exercises even during early pregnancy, chronic diseases, and after recovery from operations and diseases. However, do not exert yourself. Take care if doing during advanced pregnancy, immediately after pregnancy, major operation and injury. It is better to contact a doctor in case of doubt as some body conditions do not allow any activity or can worsen with exercises. Avoid doing these exercises in case of high fever. If the nose is congested, clean it first; however, if the congestion is due to cough/ flu/common cold, avoid doing pranayama or do them at a time of the day when you are not suffering from nose blockage.

Ramdev, yoga and other things

2008-06-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

Though it is none of my business to comment on others teaching yoga, Baba Ramdev is not just another yoga guru.

Baba sometimes takes on politicians, MNCs, western system of medicine, godmen and other institutions who, he believes, are harming the society by either dishing out half-truths or polluting minds or shortchanging gullible people. Now, you can say, his hypotheses are not always valid and his diatribe not often dispassionate. Agreed, but what is disarming about this man is his purpose and his methods.

His sincerity of purpose and purpose per se immediately appeals to the masses, and even cynical guys tend to ignore his extreme postures [eg. calling cold drinks as toilet cleaner] or seeking money to build massive yoga research infrastructure: that is, to spread yoga for well being; to tell people to care for their body, their parents, their children, their nation; to tell his evangels to lead by example; to convince people that they don’t always need money and sophisticated medical facilities for preventing and curing chronic health problems – mostly lifestyle diseases. He gives hope and self-confidence [and it works more than mere yogic asanas and pranayams] to people who have been frustrated by the ‘modern systems of medicine’]. He channelizes youth energy into constructive action. In fact, if anybody has had strong mass following after Mahatma Gandhi, it is Baba Ramdev.

His method of teaching yoga to the masses has been simple. No unnecessary, difficult exercises; no boredom in his yoga camps and their subsequent telecasts [he enlivens it with witty comments and side-tips]; not much religious preaching and mystic connections of yoga with Hinduism. [He could make it more ‘secular’ as a large number of non-Hindus participate in his camps and some sensitive ones might take exception to his reference to Hindu deities, chanting Hindu prayers, telling about the mind-purifying and spiritual effects of pranayam and so on. However, India’s majority religion being Hinduism, small references to Hindu icons helps him immensely in binding with the masses. ]; talking to people in their own language; letting people from the audience narrate their experiences.

Baba has introduced common-sense approach to yogic asanas and pranayams. You need not be straight jacketed in doing yogic exercises, and should do them according to your power of endurance which in turn depends on your age, sex, overall health, working of various organs, mental health, location, weather and climate, profession, work schedules, and so on. Again, he very sanely advises that the general public should not attempt difficult asanas or carry out pranayams for unduly long duration.

One hopes, Baba Ramdev does not succumb to temptations and does not fail to see the traps on his way. He is revered by powerful politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen and has as such become a cult figure, and may be tempted to take a leading political role. He may unknowingly become a godman. Any leaning towards a political party or patronizing a crook-in-the-garb-of-an-honest-man, taking a wrong [even if not deliberate] stand on a particular social norm, ignoring transparency and accountability in handling the huge sums he is accumulating for his dream research project have the potential to greatly harm him, his movement and the cause of yoga. Hope, he remains above all such failings.

Shavasana - worth it?

2008-06-06T03:58:00.000-07:00

I am sometimes asked why should we have shavasana after performing other asanas. It seems to be a pose just to rest, and you could rest while sitting also, so what is great about shavasana?
Yes, there is nothing that great about shavasana. It is a way to relax and if you can relax standing that is OK, but it is the standard posture for relaxation, especially after exercises. In shavasana, you lie down, relaxing all voluntary muscles of your body. Doing it for about five minutes after half an hour’s asanas would very smoothly transit you from asanas to other activities.
We must do shavasana not only after the entire series of asanas but also after long sequences of individual asanas and/or tough asanas specially the ones that greatly stretch and bend the body and those pressing endocrine glands and thus causing secretion of hormones [eg. surya namaskar, shirshasana, sarvangasana, halasana]. Shavasana is also needed if you have been in any one posture for a long time.
Remember not to fall into sleep during shavasana. You may go into a trance or meditate but only if you know these practices well and know the precautions.

Yoga is all sham !

2008-06-04T20:53:00.000-07:00

A friend shared his experience of Yoga as follows:
I started doing yoga exercises after watching a popular yoga programme on tv. It worked well for some time and I felt I was slowly getting rid of migraine, spondilytis, knee pain and burning sensation in my chest. But after three months, I was imagining those benefits. The migraine and other problems are back again. Yoga is sham.

I would tend to agree with a small modification: yoga is a present-day fad, and unscrupulous yoga teachers have made it into a sham. And I am saying this not for making a clever statement but in all sincerity. Let me explain that.

Yoga, as it is taught and widely understood, has been reduced to doing a couple of unusual exercises of the body and/or breathing. It is not what yoga is intended to be. Leave aside the eight disciplines that yogis have prescribed for a holistic practice of yoga, even the exercise part of it calls for discipline, perseverence, inner peace and a faith in body-mind-spirit healing.
Our friend told us, he had been doing sarvangasana, halasana and surya-namaskar besides a couple of pranayams. On further prodding, we came to know that he had been trying unsuccessfully to do halasana and his posture and speed of doing surya-namaskar poses was all wrong: his breathing sequence was the opposite of what it should be.In fact, going by his age [45], history of chronic ailments and not having done exercises for a long time, he should not have tried sarvangasana at all. While he blamed the tv show for his problems, later we also came to know that he read on the web of the many benefits sarvangasana could get him and decided to do it for five minutes twice a day as was prescribed by the website. It is good that this guy has not harmed his body beyond repair and has finally understood where he went wrong. He does yoga daily - a regimen of mild exercises - and is enjoying its benefits.

So, whosoever friend happens to read it, do yoga exercises [asanas and pranayams] with due consideration and care. Use expert advice, use common sense, ask questions and only then start them. You will get unbelievable benefits of body, mind and spirit!

Yoga and exorcism !!!

2008-05-27T21:38:00.000-07:00

I read a piece of news saying that one Father Jeremy Davies has written a book saying that yoga puts people at risk from devils and the occult is closely associated with the scourges of 'drugs, demonic music and pornography'.

I would not like to use any strong words to counter what the Father is reported to have said. But yoga is not exorcism, it is only a set of subtle body-mind-soul exercises that heals. It only heals, without harming in any way.

This gives me another opportunity to bring to your notice a major misunderstanding about yoga, created mainly due to some people's eagerness to sell it by whatever means they can. Yoga is not mystical-looking exercises in which you must bend your body here and there in unusual ways or breathe artificially; it guides to natural body dynamics. Yoga is not just exercising physically; it is physical, emotional and spiritual discipline. Yoga is not a one-day, one-week or one-month curative; it is a life-long healer. Yoga is not about bragging that you know an oriental fad; it must be done with humility.