The Yogic Twist - International Day of Yoga 2020

 Vrikshasana and Gomukhasana at Sunol Regional Wilderness

Tomorrow is International Day of Yoga. The International Day of Yoga has been celebrated annually on June, 21 since 2015. The proposal was introduced by India’s current Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I thought of writing a post today by taking a few excerpts from my dissertation for yoga teachers training. 

Someone at work used this quote by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and it received criticism as folks associated the Modi government with the recent protests and riots in India. I thought this quote was a great way to unfold what yoga is. He quoted it in his address during the opening of the UN General Assembly: 

“Yoga is an invaluable gift of India's ancient tradition. It embodies the unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfillment; harmony between man and nature; a holistic approach to health and well-being. It is not about exercise but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and nature.”

Yoga is often twisted, turned and assumed into something else. Dr. H. R. Nagendra, president of S-VYASA (Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana, India) and also Prime Minister Modi’s Yoga teacher, says, 

“To consider Yoga as yogasanas and yogasanas as physical exercises is to work with limited if not wrong knowledge of Yoga. Similarly, to use the terms "Yoga" and "meditation" is like saying Maths and arithmetic. Even the Yoga masters in India have started using this phrase forgetting that meditation is the seventh limb of the Ashtanga Yoga of Patanjali.” 

The challenges to the problem of this twisting and turning are associated with the journey of Yoga. In ancient India, Yoga used to be part of the mainstream lifestyle. People’s lifestyle and their sadhana was more inline with what the Indian scriptures prescribed as Yoga, a means to get established in the self. 

The society and lifestyle changed and so did the practice and the meaning of Yoga. While we have made great progress in modern science, the studies of the Indian wisdom of Yoga and spirituality from the sages of the past are no longer part of the mainstream education system. Yoga has become limited to being understood as a physical postural practice. Even then most people these days tend to Yogasanas when they are looking to get rid of physical or mental ailment as a means to get rid of stress. While Yogasana is a great practice to control stress levels, it is not completely effective if not continued regularly as a means to get to the root of the problem not just at a physical level but also at the mental, intellectual and psychological level. 

Swami Vivekananda played a key role in introducing Yoga to the western parts of the world. Vivekananda emphasized on meditation and the psychological dimensions of yoga. He constructed a holistic yoga system based on his philosophical interpretation of both the Yoga Sutras and Vedantic thought. Postural Yoga came later when people started focusing on Yoga with the lens of fitness and physical health. 

In the late twentieth century, many different brands of Yoga emerged - Iyengar, Bikram, Vinyasa, Ashtanga Yoga. All of them focus on the postural sequences synchronized with the breath. These were popularized in the west as they are not considered associated with any religious orientation and thus were adopted easily by people of all faiths.

I found many misconceptions and among those one of them was that one should be able to do Shirasasana (headstand) after becoming a Yoga teacher. Shirasasana has its own physical health benefits like other asanas but scriptures or Yoga philosophy do not prescribe any specific asana as the means to get established in Yoga.

My personal experiences told me that the understanding of yoga is narrowed down and postural yoga, if not combined with the Yoga philosophy, is at best a form of Hatha Yoga and misses out on the depth of Indian philosophical wisdom. 

I will be writing more posts primarily focused on the Philosophy of Yoga based on my understanding. It helps set the right expectations for oneself. For example, the knowledge can help eliminate false perceptions where one may think that yoga is for flexible and lean people, yoga is too easy or too hard or yoga is about mastering the asanas. The knowledge can motivate one to adapt and continue the Yoga keeping the higher goal in sight.