Q: Master, you talked about yoga. Modern people practice yoga as a form of exercise for wellness. Is this wrong?
If someone wants to 'work up a sweat,' yoga is not the way. One can jump like a maniac to rock or techno music to sweat it out, and at the same time damage hearing, heart and brains. Yoga was not meant to produce a sweat or to be practiced in a hot and humid room. These are perversions.
Yoga trains the body so that the body and mind can unite at the being level. That was and is the only purpose of yoga. Yoga means 'uniting'. It is not even union. Yoga is a verb that signifies action and the process. It is not a noun referring to a goal or end result.
The physical part of yoga is one of the eight paths that help in this process. I was trained by a great yoga Master starting from the age of three for nearly ten years. He was an instrument to prepare my body for my enlightenment. I would have reached enlightenment without this yoga; but, still, it helped immensely. It prepared my body for the rigors that I chose to subject it to in my spiritual quest.
People casually do pranayama, breath control. They play with it as if it is some bodily exercise. It is highly dangerous. Prana is life energy. Improperly used, it can cause death. Properly used, it can prolong life. Pranayama can help you live without food and water or air. All this requires understanding, guidance and practice.
Our Acharyas teach Nithya Yoga, which I developed based on the body language of Patanjali, the Father of yoga. Nithya Yoga is meditation-based and incorporates other aspects of Ashtanga Yoga, the yoga of eight paths, in a holistic manner.
Nithya Yoga is not about how well you perform an asana, a posture. It is about the intent with which you do the asana. The intent and the visualization of that intent translate into action. Your body moves with that intent. You need to make no effort. Nithya Yoga is about adding life to your movements; it has nothing to do with adding movements to your life.
Sixty and seventy-year-olds that never dreamed of practicing yoga, imagining themselves to be inflexible, practice Nithya Yoga. They find their body moving effortlessly; they are amazed.
In this cyber age, we suffer from cerebral pollution. The only solution to cerebral pollution is meditation. Nithya Yoga is built around meditation. This is the safest and most effective form of yoga that I know.