Prakash Per­sad

Yo­gis con­jure up im­ages of men who have de­vel­oped their bod­ies to such a lev­el, through sus­tained rigourous train­ing, that they can per­form acts which are so ex­tra­or­di­nary that the av­er­age per­son comes to the con­clu­sion that it is a dan­ger­ous field or that the prac­tice of yo­ga is not for every­one.

This is un­der­stand­able when one reads about yo­gis who can drink acid, stand on one leg con­tin­u­ous­ly for sev­er­al years, re­main un­clothed in bit­ter win­ter, bury them­selves for weeks with­out food and wa­ter, al­low bull­doz­ers to dri­ve over them and the list goes on.

To put things in per­spec­tive, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the world's pop­u­la­tion can­not and will not be able to take hu­man speed to the ex­treme as Mr Bolt does but run­ning is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered a good form of ex­er­cise ac­ces­si­ble to all and sundry; the same ap­plies to yo­ga.

Clas­sic yo­ga, with a his­to­ry, phi­los­o­phy and code of prac­tice which go back thou­sands of years, has eight dis­tant sub-prac­tices/stages as in­di­cat­ed by the sage Patan­jali, who wrote what many con­sid­er as the de­fin­i­tive work on yo­ga. In fact, it was and still re­mains the on­ly de­fined and re­peat­able process for ob­tain­ing a mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence.

One of its sub-prac­tices, hatha yo­ga, in­volves the ac­ti­va­tion and de­vel­op­ment of mus­cles. Many can live out their en­tire lives with­out know­ing that they pos­sessed them. It is the use of these mus­cles that al­low yo­gis to per­form these spec­tac­u­lar feats.

The prac­tice of hatha yo­ga is more than mere stretch­ing or phys­i­cal con­tor­tion, as some make it out to be. Rather it in­volves fo­cussed con­cen­tra­tion and con­trolled breath­ing in con­junc­tion with con­trac­tion and ex­pan­sion of pairs/sets of mus­cles. It is mind-body ex­er­cise.

So it em­ploys a very dif­fer­ent ap­proach from those ex­er­cise forms that al­low you to do oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties while ex­er­cis­ing. Its ben­e­fits are so enor­mous that de­spite the neg­a­tive cam­paign waged and be­ing waged by those with self-serv­ing agen­das, it has en­tered in­to the main­stream of phys­i­cal train­ing.

Yo­ga stu­dios can be found all over the world and in­creas­ing­ly teach­ers look less and less like the stereo­typ­i­cal yo­gi: a beard­ed, skin­ny, brown man in a loin cloth. Yes, those still ex­ist, but there are sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al yo­ga as­so­ci­a­tions that train and cer­ti­fy yo­ga in­struc­tors and hence the face of the yo­ga in­struc­tor has cer­tain­ly changed.

The use of yo­ga as a method for de­vel­op­ing fit, strong and at­trac­tive bod­ies is be­com­ing more and more pop­u­lar if one is to judge from the mush­room­ing of yo­ga schools and stu­dios the world over. Yo­ga, as phys­i­cal cul­ture, is be­ing used from the av­er­age per­son to su­per­mod­els. Its use in weight loss and sus­tain­ing the gains ob­tained is be­ing pop­u­larised by meth­ods like hot yo­ga, an in­tense form of yo­ga prac­tised in an el­e­vat­ed tem­per­a­ture en­vi­ron­ment.

The use of yo­ga as a ther­a­peu­tic tool for mit­i­ga­tion and cure of a va­ri­ety of ill­ness­es is a grow­ing field and stud­ies con­tin­ue to emerge that point to its tremen­dous ben­e­fits as a com­ple­ment to med­ical treat­ment. This has oc­curred as a re­sult of a grow­ing aware­ness of holis­tic and pre­ven­tive med­i­cine and the need to cut back on the abuse or overuse of an­tibi­otics.

The rea­son yo­ga has been so eas­i­ly in­te­grat­ed in­to com­ple­men­tary and holis­tic med­i­cine lies in the fact that at the ba­sis of hatha yo­ga is the prepo­si­tion that a healthy lifestyle re­quires a holis­tic ap­proach, one that in­cludes mind-body prac­tices and lifestyle changes.

As yo­ga con­tin­ues to spread and be prac­tised for its val­ue in main­tain­ing bal­anced, strong, healthy and at­trac­tive bod­ies, the em­pha­sis will shift from its ini­tial core mis­sion of prepar­ing the in­di­vid­ual to de­vel­op and evolve in­to eth­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al be­ings to one with an in­creas­ing fo­cus on phys­i­cal cul­ture. The face of yo­ga will ac­cord­ing­ly change. One can on­ly hope that this will not de­fine yo­ga but rather be viewed as an ad­di­tion­al stream of this great and an­cient prac­tice.