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The
Power of Yoga
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| It can
turn you into a human pretzel. But if you have the patience and
gumption for it, yoga could change your life for the better—both
physically and spiritually |
| By Rakesh K. Simha |
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| After spending 10 hours every day on the
corporate treadmill, Anil Sharma, a sales manager with a
leading Delhi-based transnational corporation, would get
dog-tired. Forget playing with his kids, Sharma didn’t
have the time or the energy to get some much-needed
exercise. A stress-filled week had been par for him for
the past decade. Last December, Sharma started getting his
body’s distress signals: acidity, exhaustion, the odd
palpitation, and a depressing feel in his gut. With
burnout staring him in the face, the 34-year-old Delhiite
called in sick and retreated to a city spa for two weeks
of yoga therapy. The cure worked and today Sharma does his
daily quota of asanas and meditation. "You may have
to twist your body into a pretzel, but yoga can make those
stress level plunge without you having to spend a fortune
on therapy," says Sharma, who now claims to be the
office live wire. |
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To go from distress to de-stress, Indians are calling
in the gurus, who take you through a path to enlightenment
that winds back 5,000 years. Yoga has suddenly become so
hot, so cool, so with it. It’s the exercise cum
meditation for the new millennium, one that doesn’t so
much pump you up as bliss you out.
After getting though the maze of diet fads and aerobic
routines, Indians have turned back to men with flowing
beards and saffron robes to motivate themselves.
Newspapers promote courses in breathing, meditation, yoga
and stress relief aimed at the long-suffering manager. All
over the country, temples and retreats have a new lease of
life as the burnt-out foot soldiers of capitalism seek
solace and succour.
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| It make you a fitter person, but the whole point of Yoga may be to check your ego at the door |
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As one might expect from a country rich in godliness,
there is an apparently endless supply of folk offering
enlightenment, from ascetics in remote desert ashrams to
Mata Amritananda, a Keralite who has won a huge following
merely by hugging people and promising "the bliss of
nectar". The respectable market leader in
spirituality has to be Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a 49-year-old
guru from Tamil Nadu. His movement, which brands itself
"the Art of Living", runs corporate courses for
multinational companies, charging more than Rs 1.25 lakh a
head for top managers to join sessions for 20-25
participants.
Shankar has successfully tapped into a deep well of
yearning among modern Indians. "Most of the people
who are into spirituality are in the middle class,"
said a Delhi-based follower. "The very rich and the
downtrodden are not into spirituality." |
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More...
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September 2005
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