There's More to Yoga than What Meets the Eye

New Delhi (Sputnik): It was the Indian festival of Krishna Janmashtami and 15-year-old Nivedita Joshi was attending a devotional session near her home in the Indian city of Allahabad -- recently renamed as Prayagraj. She was so engrossed in the hymns that she sat through continuously for three hours, on the ground, just like everyone else. 

After the session though, while others got up to leave, she just couldn't get up. "I felt frozen," says Nivedita, adding, "I couldn't move my legs. I was drowned in fear." This was in the early 1980s. It took a while to diagnose her ailment being slip disc-cervical spondylosis. 

"Remember, even MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan came to India only in 1992," she says.

She was rendered virtually bed-ridden and an invalid for eight long years. Every possible medical treatment was tried but without any success. 

Then, in 1996, the Yoga Centre run by Yoga Guru B.K.S. Iyengar in the Indian city of Pune was suggested to her father Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi -- one of the senior most leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It came as the ultimate news that was set to change her life. 

Nivedita went to the Pune centre in a wheel chair: hopeless, hapless and helpless. "In 12 days, Guruji (Iyengar) gave me my confidence that I had lost in the last 12 years," she says. As she saw progress in her condition, she asked Iyengar whether she would be fully cured someday. His reply to her was: "Nivedita, five to 10 per cent injury will always be there with you as it was a permanent loss. But always remember this: if we can't cure, we can endure." 
Nivedita says those golden words changed her attitude positively. 

Her initial plan was to be at the Yoga Centre for a month; but that extended to a year. And, she walked out unaided. 

IYENGAR YOGA

The ancient practice of Yoga though is considered to be 5,000 years old, it is traced to 5th Century BCE to sage Patanjali and his treatise known as 'Yoga Sutras' (aphorisms) on the theory and practice of yoga. The treatise consists of just 196 terse aphorisms. 

"What Yogacharya BKS Iyengar did -- through more than 60 years of practical research and regular practice -- was to decipher the code of Patanjali Yoga Sutras and, in a scientific way, make ordinary people experience its wisdom,"  Nivedita says.  

His style of teaching yoga is now followed by certified teachers and it is described as “Iyengar Yoga”. 

Nivedita, though initially wanted to only spread the word about Iyengar Yoga in the backdrop of her experience, saw her destiny taking her to teaching it. 

She now runs Yogakshema, Delhi National Capital Region’s only accredited Iyengar Yoga center.

In fact, the Yogacharya, who passed away in 2014 at the age of 95, hailed from the Indian state of Karnataka and was said to have been born a sickly child with severe doubts then on his survival. Given his poor health, at the age of 15, he was introduced to yoga asanas by his brother-in-law, a renowned Yogacharya T Krishnamacharya. 

His health soon transformed, and the turning point in his life came when he was just 19 years old, when his Guru sent him to the city of Pune where there was a requirement for a yoga teacher in the Deccan Gymkhana. He made rapid strides in yoga and there was no looking back.

Iyengar's name went global after a meeting in 1952 with American-born violinist and conductor Yehudi Menuhin who was performing in the Indian city of Bombay, now called Mumbai. He was suffering from acute pain, which Iyengar was able to cure in a short time through yoga. 

On Menuhin's prodding, the Yogacharya travelled to London and other European cities to teach yoga. He is considered to be one of the leading proponents responsible for the spread of yoga globally in the modern times.

A dislocation of Iyengar's spine in an accident led to his inventing innovative props such as wooden gadgets, belts and ropes that disabled people, especially, could also practice and reap benefits. 

Nivedita says that the Yogacharya shared with her three specific asanas that helped her recover. She, though doesn't want it to be published, as she says that these have to be done under the supervision of a Yoga Guru (teacher) because if they are not practised in the desired way, it could have a reverse effect. 

THE FAME PARADOX

Yoga's popularity has been soaring across continents, especially the West, where, breathing exercises known as 'pranayama' and meditation and certain 'asanas' (postures) are widely known. Yet, as its fame spreads, yoga perhaps is not understood well enough or rather superficially. 

While spinal injury has been highlighted as one of the real-life examples treated through Yoga, Nivedita points out that therapeutic yoga has provided relief from many chronic health problems such as skeleto-muscular disorders; arthritis and other joint pains, curvatures of the back and back pain, slipped discs and sciatic pain; circulatory disorders; so on and so forth.

Even in India, ironically, these benefits are not widely known. "I didn't know much about the healing powers of Yoga," says Krishnan KM, an Indian Information Technology entrepreneur and founder of Bengaluru-based Utthunga Technologies. 

In 2014, while Krishnan was on a business trip to Boulder, Colorado in the US, he started developing sciatic pain in his back and leg and soon was not in a position to even take a flight back home to India. 

Krishnan had to helplessly extend his stay in the US to three months, and only after a series of fortnightly medicated steroid shots was he in a position to just fly back. 

He was advised surgery for his cervical disc problem, but was wary of it. On suggestion from a friend in Delhi, he found another disciple of Yogacharya Iyengar, Arun HS, in Bengaluru and followed yoga. Within six months, he started jogging and was fitter than he was before.

"Yoga is not just asanas and breathing. It is more," says Nivedita hinting at the greater divine path of yoga taking one to a spiritual plane. 

Iyengar in his book, The Tree of Yoga, says: "At the culmination of yoga, there is freedom from the bondage of body." Though these enlightened words may be beyond the comprehension of many, at the moment, it shouldn't be surprising if human beings slowly started adapting a better route to wellness and healthy living through yoga.