Trinidad Guardian

The sci­ence of yo­ga has been around for gen­er­a­tions. It rep­re­sents the zenith of hu­man knowl­edge con­cern­ing the func­tions of the hu­man body.It al­so dis­plays how clev­er­ly the an­cient yo­gis de­vised meth­ods of cur­ing ill­ness­es and for­mu­lat­ing new ideas of pre­ven­tion.These tech­niques are al­most to­tal­ly ef­fec­tive in com­bat­ing most of the ail­ments that plague mankind. Any­one who prac­tis­es yo­ga can at­test to this fact.The in­ge­nious sys­tem that the yo­gis in­vent­ed made them ca­pa­ble of ac­com­plish­ing in­cred­i­ble feats that would amaze a novice.How­ev­er, with prac­tice, any­one can gain mas­tery of his body through yo­ga pro­vid­ing that he is ded­i­cat­ed.Yo­ga is not just for any par­tic­u­lar race, re­li­gion or sect. The yo­gis who in­vent­ed this sys­tem had in mind the ben­e­fit and wel­fare of the en­tire hu­man race.They could not al­low such a great sys­tem to be the priv­i­lege of a few. The in­cred­i­ble pow­er of the hu­man body was to be shared by all.Their aim was to pro­mote health and build strong bod­ies that would be free of sick­ness. Look at any reg­u­lar prac­ti­tion­er of yo­ga and ob­serve the in­ner strength that em­anates from him.

Yo­ga in dai­ly life

The West­ern world has be­come aware of this great knowl­edge. The yo­g­ic sys­tem is open­ing new av­enues of health to an ail­ing West­ern so­ci­ety who are will­ing­ly ac­cept­ing the wis­dom of the In­di­an yo­gis, es­pe­cial­ly where health is con­cerned.They are dis­cov­er­ing that in this high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal so­ci­ety the yo­g­ic sys­tem al­so has a very im­por­tant place and they can both work to­geth­er har­mo­nious­ly to cre­ate health­i­er in­di­vid­u­als, who are bet­ter able to car­ry out their dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties. It is a well known fact that a healthy body pro­duces a healthy mind.There is yo­ga for ex­er­cise for al­most every­thing, and this is not over-em­pha­sis­ing. There is a pose for near­ly every bod­i­ly de­fect.For ex­am­ple, the head stand, which is so ca­su­al in its sim­plic­i­ty, has the pow­er to take the blood di­rect­ly to the head, thus strength­en­ing the eyes, ears, nose etc, with­out the rigour that is char­ac­terised by jog­ging. The yo­gis claim that its ben­e­fi­cial ef­fects out­weigh that of jog­ging.The shoul­der stand, which can be de­scribed as a slight vari­a­tion of the head­stand, al­so pro­duces strength­en­ing re­sults in the body.The ben­e­fits de­rived are im­mense. Ex­e­cut­ing the shoul­der stand is quite easy, and few min­utes in this po­si­tion has mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits.The heart is strength­ened, cir­cu­la­tion is im­proved, the thy­roid glands are stim­u­lat­ed, an im­por­tant fac­tor in weight con­trol. These two just two ex­am­ples, but there are nu­mer­ous ex­er­cis­es which pro­vide the same im­mense val­ue.Some of the oth­er ex­er­cis­es in­clude pos­es to help in stream­lin­ing the body, strength­en and helps to make the spine flex­i­ble; im­prove the ap­pear­ance of the face and help in cur­ing dou­ble-chins and for ton­ing the mus­cles of the neck.The salient point about yo­ga is that any­one can prac­tise and age is not a de­ter­rent to achieve re­sults. These re­sults are last­ing and re­ward­ing and do not dis­si­pate like oth­er forms of ex­er­cis­es.At present the prac­tice of yo­ga has be­come more pop­u­lar, a good sign that peo­ple are be­com­ing more health con­scious. There are many cen­tres through­out the coun­try where yo­ga class­es are of­fered.