Yog Asana Practice and Life: A Perspective

Dr Mansi Karajgaonkar

Yog is a perfectly skilled action or behaviour. Perfect action is the action perceived to be positive and for the betterment of self, which indeed is a part of a process of our evolution and positive life. Perfect action leads to better health conditions on a physical, mental, spiritual and psychological level.

Practicing holistic yog helps in giving a deeper understanding in a subtle manner to choose facing and accepting over avoiding and supressing. The practice of aasnas viz. the physical postures teach about life.

Before taking any asana we breathe, we inhale and exhale and prepare ourselves for performing that particular posture; similarly, in life we need to breathe, inhale, exhale be calm and initiate.

We take the posture as per our capacity at that point of time. Similarly, in life, we need to understand our capacity at that particular moment. Indeed our capacity too may get improvised with practice and focus.

In the beginning, our capacity of practicing postures is in terms of flexibility and strength. It may be more or may be less, however, with each passing moment and with each breath, we improvise it, to be better version of our own selves. Similarly, all the lives of the other people are unique and we should always strive to be better version of ourselves each passing moment, instead of comparing our lives with others.

In case of less flexibility or strength, we don’t push ourselves to achieve the ideal posture by pushing our limits dynamically and hurting ourselves, however, we do push ourselves bit by bit, going out of comfort zone slowly.

On the very first day of practicing aasnas, we don’t expect ourselves to attain a perfect pose immediately. To begin with, we accept the present capacity of self. Acceptance about self leads to acceptance about others, about situations, letting us live our life with ease.

It begins by listening to our body more clearly, about its strengths, and the parts which need more strength. We develop an understanding, we can hear the body talking to us, and later we can listen more clearly to the mind.

As we can get into the postures, now is a time to hold them! Holding is all about strength and channelized focus and then we achieve the comfort in holding. While holding the pose, it’s vital to breathe normally. Be it poses or life, holding with patience is holding with strength, grace and courage.

Also, practicing holistic Yog, which indeed is an integration of multiple elements in practice at various levels and various dimensions inseparable from others, is an ancient art that connects the mind and body, it’s one of the finest methods to connect to the nature by balancing the mind-body connection. It’s also immensely therapeutic which merges an individual's physical, mental and spiritual components to improvise the aspects of being.

Let’s all of us grow and glow with the flow.