By Devi Asmarani (The Jakarta Post)
You probably know these stories, or variations of them.
A colleague with a bad back started taking up yoga a few months ago and now he rarely complains of pain anymore.
A friend gave up smoking thanks to yoga and is now a picture of perfect health.
Someone you know with emotional problems sought solace in yoga and after a year of regular practice was transformed into a model of composure and contentment, a world apart from her former angry self.
These are some familiar stories of people whose lives have changed for the better thanks to this ancient discipline, a path to enlightenment that traces back some 3,500 years in its native India.
The yoga wave has been globally infectious as well as expansive in the last two decades. More doctors and therapists recommend it to their patients, celebrities swear by it to keep their body in shape, and athletes complement their training with it.
At health centers, muscle-bound men put down their weights for serious stretches in 50-minute yoga classes, while in cramped office spaces, employees take benefit from company-subsidized private yoga sessions to improve their physical and mental wellbeing.
Decision makers are also turning to yoga to clear their heads and give them focus, including US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who practices every week with some of her colleagues at their office’s gym.
From kids to senior citizens, from injured patients to pregnant women, the markets for yoga are increasingly more specific.
Still, not many people, even practitioners, know much about yoga other than it teaches people to breathe properly and improve their strength and flexibility.
As a practitioner of yoga, I have been asked many times: Is it a physical or mental exercise? Is it a contemplative practice? Is it faith-based?
To answer this question, let’s take a look at yoga’s long and complex evolution.
The yoga we practice today actually bears little resemblance to its humble beginnings over three millennia ago, but it has retained elements of its ancient heritage of meditation from which it arose.
The actual word yoga first surfaced around 1,500 BCE, in Vedic literature. The oldest of the sacred texts, the Rig Veda, a collection of hymns or mantras, defines yoga as “yoking” or “discipline”, but offers no accompanying systematic practice.
Yoga as a mental discipline became prominent in the Upanishad, the sacred revelations of ancient Hinduism that date back to at least 800 BCE. Here, yoga is seen as a path taken to achieve enlightenment, or liberation from suffering, mainly through the disciplines of karma yoga (the path of action or ritual) and jnana yoga (the path of knowledge or intense study of scripture).
But it wasn’t until an enigmatic philosopher/writer known as Patanjali wrote his treatise, the Yoga Sutra, that yoga was presented as a systematic discipline.
Revered as the father of modern yoga, Patanjali compiled a collection of 195 sutras (aphorisms) in the second century CE. It is the first practical treatise on daily living, starting with how to conduct oneself in society and culminating in the act of final liberation or enlightenment.
This fascinating literature has become a standard reference point for the yoga teachers of today.
Patanjali believed suffering is the result of human attachment to external experiences, when the fruits of actions are held on to or when desire pulls us away from our connections to a higher consciousness.
According to him, only hard work (karma yoga) and deep meditation (jnana yoga) can relieve human suffering and lead to liberation. His now famous eight-limbed path of yoga (Ashtanga yoga) has been used and expanded by yoga scholars and masters as a blueprint for living in the world and for attaining enlightenment ever since.
Post Patanjali, or classical yoga, saw the rise of other schools that departed from these older tenets. One of them is Hatha yoga, which first appeared in the ninth or tenth century.
The name Hatha originates from the word “ha” or sun and “tha” or moon, signifying the union of opposites. Hatha yoga practitioners believe in bringing together the body and mind through strength, discipline and effort.
Modern day yoga is an offshoot of Hatha yoga and focuses primarily on physical poses called asana. But it was the contemplative paths of yoga that first drew in western thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Only at the turn of the twentieth century did Yoga asana gain prominence in the West, particularly the United States, when Hatha yoga adherents began to look more seriously at the physical benefits of the practice.
Purists often criticize the western obsessions with toned biceps, flat abs and “yoga butts”, but, ironically, the fascination with physical prowess was fueled by three Indian swamis (a Hindu honorific title) who studied and expanded the Hatha yoga repertoire in the early twentieth century.
Swami Kuvalayananda, and Swami Sivananda and T. Krisnamacharya explored the health benefits of yoga and developed a richer, more varied system of asanas and pranayama (breathing control) techniques. More importantly, they made it accessible to laymen and women.
Today, people who practice various traditions of Hatha yoga such as Ashtanga vinyasa, Iyengar or Power yoga have these three great yoga masters to thank.
Now back to earlier question: Is yoga a mind or body exercise? The answer is both.
Yoga strengthens the body and brings flexibility not only to the spine, but also to the mind. It calms the nervous system, quiets the mind and connects the practitioner more deeply to his or her spiritual center.
Certain yoga poses - such as the downward-facing dog - stretch muscles that from animal studies are known to stimulate and massage the lymph system, which carries fluid composed of white blood cells that bathes the tissues and drains the waste products of cellular activities.
Yoga also relaxes, as it manipulates the autonomic nervous system, which is comprised of the sympathetic system, the-so-called fight-or-flight response and the parasympathetic, or relaxation, response.
When you breathe deeply and release muscle tensions by stretching and when you have a relaxed focus and become present in your body, you practically switch the fight-or-flight system off and the relaxation response on.
This slows down your heartbeat, decreases your respiration, and lowers your blood pressure. It is a healing mechanism.
Yoga is often called meditation in movement because of its contemplative nature. There are numerous schools of yoga, each offering different techniques and emphasis, but all share the common goal of attaining awakening, whether in the body or the mind.
Now awakening or enlightenment may not be what you seek, but remember that Hatha yoga - just as its name suggests - is an art, as well as science, of balancing effort and relaxation. It thrives not on struggle but on a state of receptiveness and surrender.
And out of this comes bliss. Namaste.
The writer is a yoga practitioner and teacher. Yoga Connection is a regular column on all things yoga, appearing every second week in the Body & Soul section. For questions and comments please email her at dasmaran@indo.net.id.
Click here for relieving Stress with Yoga Practice
Click here for amazing Self Healing Meditation Technique
Click here for Sleep Optimization Program: Number 1 Sleep And Insomnia Solution
Click here for alternative of natural nutrition food that can help you sleep better and waking up full of energy
Click here for Goji berry opportunities
Related Articles:
- 7 Exercises to Fabulous Butt and Legs for adults 40 years and over
- Run For Your Life – Running Slow the Aging Process
- Finding the Competitive Edge
- Health Watch Today - Breakthrough Goji Study Released
- Unbelievable but true: Too much drinking water can be fatal
- How Exercise can help you get better quality sleep?
- When is the best time and what type of exercise can help you get better quality sleep?
- How to Win the Fight Against Fatigue
April 20th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
All my respect goes to those suffering, be it you personally or a family member. My hope is for a major breakthrough very soon to help all those in need.