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Learn Yoga, Pranayama and Meditation the Scientific Way of Life
Yoga is an umbrella term, which includes Yoga, Pranayama Meditation. They are an integral part of ancient Indian philosophy. Yoga does not help improve muscles. It strengthens your internal organs, body, mind, brainpower, neural network and immunity. So, Coronavirus cannot make you prey. It is a scientific way of life.
The basic concept of Yoga
As we have seen in Section 3 on Good Health, in order to maintain good health, in addition to choosing good foods, you have to maintain the right kind of Yoga, Pranayama and Meditation depending on your age, requirement and purpose of life. Here we are dealing with the fundamentals of Yoga philosophy.
Writing on Yoga in a limited space is a formidable task. “Yoga” is an umbrella term, which includes conviction, philosophy, and practices. Yoga, Pranayama and Meditation are an integral part of ancient Indian philosophy of life in consanguinity with the Natural Universe, developed by ancient Indian sages. Separation of one from the others would make it conceptually imperfect by very definition. The process of Yoga is popularly misunderstood as a physical exercise as practiced in various fitness centers. This is not true. Yoga does not help improve muscles. It is of course a sort of exercise for the internal organs, mind and brain including the neural network. It is a scientific approach to integrate the body-mind-soul with Transcendental Wisdom. There is no doubt that unlike all other belief systems in the world, Indian philosophy was not written by a single wise person at a particular point of time. This has evolved and perfected over thousands of years by innumerable great saints, scientists and philosophers who had wide-ranging knowledge and information about Mother Earth, Nature, Universe as well as life and death. It is so pluralistic in nature that monotheist people cannot simply conceive it. It is as wide and intricate as Nature itself, which accommodates both living and non-living things. Old world scientists could not perceive it. Modern science has fully recognized it. Scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose was perhaps the first person to recognize it in the 19th century.
Yoga in Google
In this Internet age, if you search in Google by the word ‘Yoga’, you will get about 1,940,000,000 results (0.73 seconds), by the word ‘Meditation’, you will get about 482,000,000 entries just in 0.70 seconds, and by the word ‘Pranayama’, you will get about 22,00,00,000 entries just in 0.70 seconds. Imagine that most of these researches are done in America and Europe’s top-level institutes, universities and philanthropic organizations in addition to some corporate bodies. Of course, many such kinds of research are very recently taken up in the land of their origin, Indian soil. It is really very encouraging that in many universities, colleges and schools in the USA, Yoga has been made mandatory. Unfortunately, in India, politics in the name of democracy is so much important that good things are not allowed institutionally. Of course, in many families in North, South and Western India, it is practiced from the very childhood. If you move across about 80 historical bathing Ghats in the oldest surviving city in the world, Benaras in the early morning, you will be fascinated to see that Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian people- rich or poor- educated or uneducated, are practicing Yoga in the same flat surface for hours together.
Why do You Need to practice Yoga?
It is the best scientific way to maintain an ideal balance between body- mind- soul and Transcendental wisdom. Essentially, there is nothing like ‘religious prejudice.’ If practiced regularly for a minimum duration of 15 minutes over a long period of time, we are sure, your physical constitution will be improved significantly. Your immunity system will be strengthened to withstand many conventional diseases, enhance your tolerance power, and increase your concentration and brainpower. Death is inevitable for everything in this Universe- living or inanimate, but you can enormously defer your aging, increase resistance power and physical efficiency while consolidating your ‘will power’ without requiring any man-made instrument and medicine.
As researched by Western scholars, India is the motherland of spirituality where traditions, customs and festivals are essential parts of daily life. Unfortunately, since foreign invaders from about 950 AD onwards have deliberately ruined great Indian ancient scriptures, most Indians are not aware of their rich cultural heritage. It is doubtless that the British explored and brought out most of the precious documents written by the great minds of India over thousands of years. Max Muller (German philosopher and historian) must be appreciated for his great efforts in this regard.
What Yoga Does for Body Mind Soul?
Let us now come to the core. In our body, there are seven main chakras. Chakras are intersections of energy lines, and there are 108 such energy lines from the Muladhara Chakra (Root Chakra) to the Sahasra Chakra (Crown Chakra) through all other energy lines. One of the energy lines (Sushumna) connects us to the crown chakra, the stage at which the body is enlightened or Self-realized. And the realm of consciousness is heightened. The origin of Yoga is researched to date back to pre-Vedic Indian traditions; it is mentioned in the Rigveda, but most likely further developed around the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, in ancient
India's ascetic and śramaṇa movements, largely credited to classical texts of Upanishads. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali date from the first half of the 1st millennium CE. But the West came to judge it scientifically only in the 20th century. Hatha Yoga texts emerged around the 11th century with origins in the Tantric quest.
Yoga gurus from India later introduced yoga to the West, following the success of Swami Vivekananda in the late 19th century and Swamy Yogananda later. In the 1980s, yoga became popular as a system of physical exercise across the Western world. Yoga in Indian traditions, however, is more than physical exercise; it has a meditative and spiritual value. Many renowned Hollywood actors and actresses have become Yoga students either here in India or in the US itself under Indian gurus. Many studies have tried to determine the effectiveness of Yoga as a complementary intervention for cancer, schizophrenia, asthma, heart disease, brainpower, immunity and psychological disorder. The results of these studies have been mixed and inconclusive, with cancer studies suggesting none, and others suggesting Yoga may reduce risk factors and aid in a patient's psychological healing process. But boosting immunity power will prevent many of these diseases. Mind matters the most.
International Yoga Day by UNO
On 11 December 2014, the 193-member United Nations General Assembly approved by consensus a resolution establishing 21 June as "International Day of Yoga". The declaration of this day came after the call for its adoption as International Day of Yoga by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his address to the UN General Assembly on 27 September 2014. In suggesting 21 June, which is one of the two solstices (either of the two times in the year, the summer solstice and the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its highest or lowest point in the sky at noon, marked by the longest and shortest days), as the International Day of Yoga, Narendra Modi had said that the date is the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and has special significance in many parts of the world. The first International Day of Yoga was observed worldwide on 21 June 2015.
According to PÄṇini, a 6th-century BCE Sanskrit scholar, the term Yoga can be derived from either of two roots, Yuji Yoga (to yoke) or yuj samÄdhau (to concentrate). In the context of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the root yuj samÄdhau (to concentrate) is considered by traditional commentators as the correct etymology. Vyasa who wrote the first commentary on the Yoga Sutras, states that Yoga means samÄdhi (concentration).
For the saints, the ultimate goal of Yoga is moksha (liberation). For the common man, it is the costless way to maintain a balanced body- mind and soul.
