Make Yoga an Everyday Practice

As I start to craft a piece on yoga for ‘The Heart’— a charitable organization that promises free health services— I remember the words of cardiologist Dr. Chandan Modak— “It’s unfortunate, sister-in-law. The patients you have brought here for treatment are all the cases of self-neglect.” This he said when I encountered him in the premise of Dispur Hospitals. Sadly, the patients he talked about were my seriously sick relatives I was helping out at that time. Very embarrassed, though I said it might be a case of unidentified fear for some deadly disease that might be detected when diagnosed, I did realize how negligence towards health might have us on risks and might increase the challenges of the physicians as well.

This perhaps answers the question that popped into my head when Dr. Chandan, the President of The Heart, wanted me to write a piece on yoga for his website. My initial wonder was if yoga has anything to do with an institute that is already providing free treatment and medication. Later, what understanding I am left with is even if we have all-healer doctors as well as improved medical facilities in our vicinity, our utter ignorance about the biological body married with our sloppiness may take us to what we call ‘unfortunate’ in our life. To avoid this, we have to take on some practice that guarantees a fitness life if not totally ailment free life. It should be a practice that would at least let us have some workable knowledge about our bio body that in turn would make us aware of the facts ‘I am not feeling well’, ‘My body parts/organs are not working the way they used to’ etc. Above all, it should be a tool that would enhance our sense of watchfulness on our body. Here yoga comes as a message.

Yoga, as the word implies, is the union of the petty self (citta) with the Pure Self. But how citta attains Pure Self is another story of another day. For, the intent of this write-up is not to go the detail of a yogi’s complete journey towards the attainment of the ultimate truth. Rather it is to highlight yoga as a practical training of mind and body. For it is also a practice the cultivation of which helps generate good health, longevity and perennial happiness and peace.

Though the training involves long eightfold path of discipline, the popular among them are asana (postures), pranayama (control of breath) and dhyana (meditation). A brief discussion about these three would be handy to know how they work as a healing tool for our body and mind.

Asana means steady and comfortable position. It looks after the way we park our body. And it plays a great role in every activity we do. For whatever we do, say reading, eating or sleeping etc. we do in a particular posture the inappropriateness of which may cost us our attention, concentration and workability. Asanas are gentle stretching movements introduced to help balance the body and mind. They are designed to rejuvenate the brain, spine, glands and internal organs. They have all-pervading effect on the physical, mental and spiritual functioning of the body. Through healing, strengthening, stretching, and relaxing the skeletal, muscular, digestive, cardio-vascular, glandular and nervous systems, they enhance the physical functioning of the body. Through the cultivation of a quiet and a peaceful mind, alertness and concentration, they augment the mental functioning of the body. Lastly, by preparing the body for meditation, they boost up the spiritual functioning of the body.

Pranayama is the control of breath. It thus deals with the regulation of inhalation, retention and exhalation of breath. Through the control of breath it controls prana or vital energy. Then what is prana? Prana is the sum total of all forces or energies— material and spiritual— in the universe. These energies drive themselves outwardly in terms of objects through the vehicle of the body. Thus all the forces, from thought down to the lowest force, are the manifestation of prana. Now the process of inhalation, retention and exhalation, the physiological activity of the body, is all the outward indication of the internal activity of the prana. Thus what pranayama does here is to have a thorough knowledge of and to have a control over prana.

Dhyana is meditation. Here the mind concentrates on a particular thing, form or concept for a considerable length of time. Now what does the practitioner attain through this process of concentration? When the practitioner concentrates on a particular object, he withdraws his senses from the outward things. Slowly, the mind stops getting perturbed from external influences. Once the mind is free from the sway of externality, it becomes quiet and in the quietness of the mind, one can watchfully observe the activities of his limbs and organs. Indeed, it is one of the ways how we can converse with our body parts and can be aware of the disorder or malfunctioning, if any, of them.

This we can hardly manage to do in the hustle and bustle of our eventful life. Our goal is always outside and hence our energy is directed outwardly reverse of which occurs very rarely. But the milestone we strive to achieve in this goal oriented busy life often comes at the cost of our health and wellbeing. We should remember that staying healthy is also our prime duty. And we should be careful about our health and immune systems that are under constant assault from stress, pollution and contaminated foods. That requires us to fit healthy habits into our hectic life. Acquisition of healthy habits would hopefully allow us to live fit without relying much on health care provider in general and would help the poor stay healthy without spending money on health in particular.

Healthy living does not cost much. A little awareness does wonders in this regard. Probably it is the noble intention behind the inclusion of yoga as one of the items on the agenda of The Heart that seeks to address the issues of health by navigating through the problem of ‘heart’, a vital organ of human body as well as a term that is used to mean ‘most important point’ (e.g. ‘heart of the matter’, ‘heart of the answer’ etc.). For the free services sought to provide by this organization are specially meant for the needy many, not necessarily for the privileged few. And yoga is such a practice that promises health free of cost. The only cost the practitioner has to bear is his/her regularity and readiness. This practice is, however, like any other healthy practices, opposed to procrastination. As Wayne Gretzky says, “Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.”