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An Asana For Its Own Sake

You can’t indulge in pranayama for a flat stomach or do an asana for weight loss.

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An Asana For Its Own Sake
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Here I am in Guangzhou for the first Indo-China Yoga summit and 1,200 yoga students have gathered to learn from the legend, B.K.S. Iyengar, fondly called ‘guruji’.

“I teach spiritual and not sensual yoga,” guruji announces. One is both terrified and purified in the presence of this 93-year-old—he teaches with such clarity, precision and abundance. The way you stand on your feet affects the way your brain thinks, your eyes see and your mind perceives, so we practise ‘Tadasana’ (standing straight) for over an hour till we reach the ‘not bad’ stage (yes, he’s difficult to please).

I keep meeting clients who almost died (ok, fainted) doing ‘yoga’. It’s because the teachers themselves are clueless about the intricacies of asana practice. In India, we have yoga classes in every nook and corner, not because of a genuine curiosity but because of its promise of weight loss.

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And that’s the problem. There are so many ‘yoga injuries’ around: sprained ankles, swollen knees and broken backs, all because of incorrect posture or asana sequences repeated a hundred times to burn calories.

Yoga, says Iyengar, diverts the flow of the mind from the five senses of perception (sight, smell, sound, touch, taste) towards the self or consciousness. You can’t indulge in pranayama for a flat stomach or do an asana for weight loss. Instead, asana and pranayama will make you indifferent to weight loss or a flat tummy.

Maybe Iyengar is not as popular here, as yoga lacks the glamour of quick weight loss, and he has a ‘work hard to get every asana right’ sincerity. The question is, will we be brave enough to patronise teachers who advocate asana and pranayama in its strict, pure form?

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(Nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar’s latest book is called Women and the Weight Loss Tamasha.)

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