What they don't teach you about Yoga

Here is a secret, specially meant for you: Yoga is innate and it cannot be separated from you! 

Key words

Logam = world in particular        bhogam = experience joy, enjoyment

Boologam = Planet Earth            Yogam = luck by union, root of yog or yoga

Tamil = most ancient language  Bharatha Vaasis = People living in India or Bharath

Ved, Vedh = most ancient formulas or utterances, later on scripted on scrolls

Siddhar = perfected beings, in rare cases super beings

The ancients knew that, #Yoga is an inherent hidden bonding in all living things. Yes, similar to what Jackie Chan says about "real Kung fu" to Jaden Smith in the movie "The Karate Kid".  No matter who we are, fact is, we are already in some form of #Yogam from the beginning of our lives! Our understanding and practice of this secret which is both a science and an art, makes us healthy, wealthy and wise.

Space, Fire, Air, Water and Earth; any union of these five primordial universal elements is by itself a Yogam. Without yogam there is no Logam or bhogam. Unfortunately (remember this word unfortunately), many of our other Indian brothers and sisters or still better called as well settled and educated Bharatha Vaasis have forgotten their conscious connection with this ancient secret.

Let me explain it to you in a simple manner. You very well know that the contemporary Indian educational system has been British driven till India's independence, the point is that this system has continued with the same format or schools of thought, more vigorously even after the British left India! So much more vigorously that today, many Indians can speak or write better English than the common British themselves! Ahaa as a reader you can counter me and say "well aren't there many British or Americans who are more adept or established  in Yoga than the millions of Indians?"; Yes good hit, your point scored, and I accept it. But my request to all of you is to further dwell on the subject. Rethink on the past 470 years of colonial occupation, which resulted in the very same British powers to even have promoted the syllabi "Yoga" and its practice, ahem this would certainly raise many eyebrows. Well, the wisdom in this world says "anything good, take it, own it and proliferate it if need be". Yoga is good, more good than any other forms of life-styles mentioned above, and so it is no wonder that the United Nations General Assembly has adopted June 21st as International Yoga day!

Having said that, let us move further towards the original term, which was "Yogam" as spoken from the south Indian Siddhar tradition and in the north Indian tradition, the spiritual Gurus or Maharajas called it is as "Yog". The terms Ved, Vedh, Vedic or Vedham, comes from Veedhai (seed) in Tamil or from Vedhalam in Tamil [phantom to phantom space] all of these terms have similar linguistic roots.

All Vedic scriptures are theories and therefore Yoga becomes the practical experiments, in our laboratory called our Universe or our existence.  

To you, my dear readers, all that I am pointing out, are on to the similarities first, because the differences you would see quickly, but the similarities among these concepts, facts and cultures which are obvious, seems to take longer to realize. Hence, the confusion on what Asanas (yogic postures or positions, KS guys please excuse for now) to select among the 2700 postures, and what to do next?

Another fact is, this ancient science for wisdom is actually undated, although Wikipedia fixes dates arbitrarily, it took the western civilizations nearly 700 years to come to some sort of understanding on Yoga and its capabilities due to language, cultural barriers and more so due to the innumerable wars fought out for control over the natural resources in the last 2000 years.   

Remember, earlier I had mentioned "unfortunately" in the above paragraphs because, our modern or contemporary educational system has been very selective in imparting this wisdom, why? The main reason being due to the scarcity of resources, the focus of education and employment was tuned towards tangible rewards, and for material benefits or tangible developments. The focus was not on to the development of intangibles like consciousness or yogic values on this planet. This was the first real and biggest paradigm shift in our collective consciousness since the 15th century.

Therefore, after nearly 250 years of such modern approaches towards tangible developments, the results we get to see are world order and sophistication. Well, having said that, we also see that such styles of decisions favoring material or tangible developments have lead to unpredictable economic slowdowns, global warming, diseases and this negativity list continues to grow.

Continuing on with the sophistication ideas, such as cloud computing, block chains, big data etc., philosophically you might even comment that, 'when we churn the "ocean of life" with the "snake of technology" both good and bad objects will surely result in the process', Oh no not just the Python tool, in this story this is a bigger one in the universe called "Vasuki", Perhaps someone from Google can use this to name for their new AI Search angel or engine, (readers please later on google search for the parkadal story, I promise you it is another interesting mythological read, similar to Carl Off O' fortuna on the lunar wax-wane).

Let us get back to the point, yes agreed besides a lot of goodness, we will have some bad results too! Now, is this not the situation or time for our understanding to get clearer and better among us? Practice of Yoga will enable us to be good receivers. Here is another proof.  

In the 1960's it was called "the Maharishi Effect", Google this too for more info, else read on. This experiment proved that the application of Yogic principles brought down the crime, accidents and disease-death rate by an average of 77% in the State of Iowa, USA. And all this was made possible, by just the square root of 1% of the state's population practicing meditation and TM Siddhi Yog, which accounted to about 7000 members. This philosophy and its practice was drawn from one of the Yoga sutras which says, "Heyam Dukham Anagatam" meaning "avert the sorrow or danger even before it arises" !  

Fortunately, in the last few years there has been much impetus given to this science of Yog by the government of India, various international groups and the UNGA. Let us remind ourselves that we are more blessed to born on this great planet, therefore we all have a collective responsibility towards improving our lifestyles, health and prosperity. But first, let us get a clear hold on the concept of Yoga, that it is not just a body bending exercise, but a way of life-style giving the best results. Any #Yogic practice without following #Prathihara [self purification] will not yield results, instead it may lead to negative consequences. Why? We are already in the flow of Yogham, and any sort of yogic practices are like a management intervention or like a surgical intervention. Even the world renowned EI Guru Daniel Goleman in his works on #Emotional #Intelligence, emphasis on #self-awareness and #self-regulation before achieving effective results, which is what Prathihara is all about.

• Good luck to you all, cheers! Do leave your comments below or email to me at [email protected] Courtesy #SIMERF