One of the important things that I strive as a teacher of yoga is to offer bite sized pieces of the practice and make it accessible to all –irrespective constraints pertaining to time, space or fitness levels. A little practice can work wonders on our mind, body and soul, provided there is a lot of regularity in the practice. Regularity is the key here. It should become something so ingrained in our daily routine –almost like brushing of our teeth or taking a bath.
For yoga to become a way of life, there is an urgent need to uncouple it from its association as a form of exercise. Because, if we see yoga as only a form of exercise, then the purpose of practice becomes more focused only one physical benefits and to some extent, on the mental benefit. Hence, if it is uncoupled from the category of “exercise”, the purpose of doing the practice gets recalibrated automatically.
The Masters again and again thunder that yoga is a direct path for Self Realisation. But not all of us are consciously seeking / wanting for Self-Realisation. It is different matter that whether we are consciously seeking or not, we all are eventually going to reach that final destination.
Setting aside Self-Realization for moment, what can be our purpose for practicing yoga – apart from the crazy obsession with weight loss and confirming to the stupid beauty standards of how our bodies should look? How can yoga practice benefit us in our everyday lives? We can take the help of Bhagavad Gita to help us calibrate our purpose.
The Bhagavad Gita gives 3 beautiful definitions for yoga. They are:
- Samatvam Yoga Ucyate (B.G Chapter 2, verse 48)
Samatvam here means evenness / equipoise. Evenness of mind is called yoga.
We live in a world of relatives. It is a composition of opposites –pain & pleasure, joy & sorrow, light & dark, ups & downs…everything has its pair of opposite and we cannot experience one without the other. But we are wired to run only behind joy and pleasure and happiness. Nothing wrong with it, but at the same time, we must not lose our bearings when life gives us pain, sorrow, failure and so on.
To have a mind that never loses its balance and accepts both ends of the spectrum with grace and poise is what will help us live our lives with ease. Also, once we train our minds to accept the situation as it is by being objective, we will start responding to the situation, rather than reacting, which will again make our lives easier and joyful.
The point to note here is, equanimity of mind doesn’t mean that we are all the time sunny and joyful and don’t feel sad or angry or upset or frustrated or any other emotions belonging to the spectrum. It just means that we bounce back to normalcy faster and not let it dictate the course of our thoughts, actions and ultimately, our lives. We become the master of our destiny.
- Yogah Karmasu Kausalam (B.G Chapter 2, verse 50)
Yoga is skill in action
As a human being, we are rarely in the state of being. We are always in the state of doing. We are always engaged in some activity or the other, every single second of our lives. Even when we sleep, action goes on. The heart beats, the stomach digests, blood circulates and so on. Leaving aside the involuntary actions that is taken care of by the body itself, just see how much of ‘doing’ happens.
Apart from our work, chores, creative pursuits / hobbies, social obligations, we have also added scrolling mindlessly through the smartphone to our list of ‘doing’. But ‘doing’ without awareness or mindfulness does not result in excellence. In a culture that celebrates multi-tasking and embraces “busy”ness as a symbol of success, we are rarely human “beings”, but human “doings”
But I digress. For any work to be done to the best of our abilities, we need to be focused. All our faculties must converge with complete intensity. Only then our actions will be skillful and our life itself will be a skill in action. The ease with which we go about our life –consciously instead of compulsively, with full awareness and alertness –that is the ultimate skill in action.
- Duhkha-Samyoga-Viyogam Yoga-Samjnitam (B.G Chapter 6, verse 23)
Dis-association from sorrow is yoga
And finally, as we make our mind equipoised and navigate with skill and ease through our lives, automatically, our mind and intellect gets so purified that it starts reveling in our Self, whose very essence is that of existence-conscious-bliss. How beautifully the idea progresses here!
All life forms –be it a human or a unicellular organism – the underlying reason / motivation / purpose for any action that it does is gaining happiness and getting rid of sorrow. Let’s see a simple example. We all eat to nourish our body. But if we strip the reasons bare, the underlying reason is to remove the sorrow of hunger and experience the joy of satiation. This is true for all our actions. We work so that, with the money earned, we remove the sorrow caused by the fear of insecurity and gain the happiness of prosperity.
The single purpose behind all our actions is this alone – to be happy. Once we ‘know’ this, then we also understand that people around us do what they do to gain their own happiness. And this makes our relationships better, we start respecting the choices of our fellow humans, we become more kind and empathetic. It all starts with us and we can only work on ourselves.
With these three beautiful definitions, the purpose of yoga becomes clear. It also gives us guidelines to set our intention for the practice. This powerful tool has the capacity to transform our lives immensely. We don’t have to twist ourselves into murukku and jangiri (why say pretzel when we have our own equivalents) to achieve that. Asana is just one very small aspect of yoga. All that is needed is a little practice with a lot of regularity.
Om…Peace….Peace…Peace!