Page 30 - seniors today August issue

Fitness
Yoga Basics and Pranayam
What is Yoga essentially and what is all the fuss about?
Yoga trainer Fatema Rajkotwala explains, in the second of
It seems to me that everyone knows what
Yoga is today and I don’t mean only a select
subset of international travelling, city dwelling,
politically active, nationalism-loving or
Rishikesh visiting Indians. Yet, every so often,
once someone learns that I teach Yoga, they’ll
ask me something basic such as, “I want to be
able to sit for meditation but I don’t like Yoga;
I do _____ form of exercise. Or ‘So, can you put
your legs behind your head?’ Or ‘I want to learn
Yoga but I’m not flexible.”
Of course, you’re not expected to ‘know how to
do Yoga’, which is like saying you want to learn
Japanese but you’re nervous about not knowing
Japanese. This is why I’m happy to write about
the basics of Yoga. For me it is something like
knowing the answer to a puzzle - the answer is
clear once you know it. Until then, it could be
pretty confusing as to what exactly is Yoga, the
various types of Yoga styles taught and why
people all over the world seem to be obsessed
about it.
Not just asanas
So, firstly, Yog pronounced as Yog-ah by
westerners, is not restricted to simply asana
practice, in a hot room or not. In fact, as per the
Yoga Sutras, one is not even eligible to practice
30
a three-part series
Asanas until you have practiced implementing
the initial moral disciplines of personal and
social conduct or Yamas and Niyamas. In our
current slightly morally stray environment, it
may seem difficult to decide when one is ready
to ever undertake the practice of Asanas. The
logic of this was simply the understanding
that when one indulges in any immoral act
via thoughts, words or action, one cannot be
in a balanced state of mind enough to focus on
disciplined practice.
And what may surprise some even more is
that as per the text, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika,
the most detailed and credible information
on Hatha Yog, the classical form of physical
exercise in ancient India as a culture, regardless
of your religion, caste or creed, one is not
advised to practice Pranayam until one has
established oneself in regular, consistent
Asana practice. Why then are most Yoga
teachers teaching Pranayam within the first
class you attend? This is because you can still
get the preliminary benefits of training the
breathing muscles through Kriyas (cleansing
rituals such as Kapalbhati, correcting a habit
of shallow breathing, opening and therefore
balancing the flow chain of the breathing
cycle by activating the dormant side of the
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