In so many years of teaching yoga, so many have come up to me with ailments which they acquired due to wrong practice of yoga. To quote an example, Dr Prasan Prabhakar of Lakshmi Hospital, Kochi came to me with a chronic cold. He told me that he had attended a yoga camp where he was taught a rapid breathing technique and was informed that it might result in a minor cold which would last 48 hours. The cold for him started after a week and never subsided. He could not sit in AC room even in scorching heat because of the cold. When he approached the organization, the ‘instructor’ told him that at times it becomes chronic and he can do nothing about it! I explained to him that by rapid breathing movement of prana in the body gets disturbed and based on the degree to which the prana is disturbed one contracts a disease. There are five major pranas in the body detailed in the Sanatan Kriya under the topic of Paanch Mahaprana. These pranas control vital functions in the body and have a specific location and direction, which gets disturbed owing to rapid breathing.

Another doctor, Shalini Mishra who is a general physician from Mumbai told me that she has had more than 20 cases where people having performed certain asanas after watching on television or in a yoga camp have contracted severe knee injuries, neck injuries and spinal problems.

Yoga is never taught en masse, it is an individual journey, disseminated as per the ancient guru-shishya parampara, where the guru has a one-to-one relationship with the shishya. Guru is not someone wearing a fancy robe or with beautiful beard, offering innovative solutions to your problems and asking for a fee in return, that is a businessman. Yama is the first limb of Ashtanga Yoga which is satya, asteya, aparigraha, ahimsa, brahmcharya. If you look at the first three yamas—satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing) and aparigraha (non-collection)—all three are flouted by these so-called yoga gurus. For the truth is, there is nothing called as solution to a problem, there is only karma, which when improved through service and charity, automatically ameliorates problems in your life. Charging a fee for a lie is stealing and building palatial ashrams with seekers’ money is collection. How do you call someone who fails in the very basics of yoga as a yogi? You cannot.