Yoga and Meditation

                A yoga workshop was conducted in insti on 3rd March. It was announced in smail and I registered for it (it was free). I went to the place and there were about 30 people there. The instructor asked each of us why we were there. People had different, but related, reasons - to learn yoga, to get toned, to lose weight, to get healthy, for a change in their usual physical exercise, etc.. I wasn't there for any of those reasons. I was just curious. Yoga has been around for a millenium may be. It has spread to the west too and quite a lot of people practice it. I wanted to know why so many people believe in it, and maybe pick up something interesting from it. There had to be something in it if so many people approved it for so long (but then people blindly follow religion too, so I was skeptical). When I was in 6th grade, I practiced yoga for a couple of weeks in my school, before karate appealed more to me and I switched to it. Unfortunately, the karate classes in that school were packed after some 6 months after I joined.

                In the yoga workshop, after the usual "we all have problems, yoga will help you to fix them, it will help you with this, it will help you in that, etc..", the instructor started us up on some warm up exercises - stretching and rotating wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, etc... Then came the famous Suryanamaskara. With all the tightness accumulated from weight training and the loss in conditioning due my laziness in the last 2 years, I found the asanas a little uncomfortable, but I went through them. After 2 hours, I felt I understood what this was all about. I know its not fair to judge an art based on just a 2 hour intro session, but I believe the rest is all an extension of whatever was taught in those 2 hours.

Apparently, yoga is a series of exercises involving static stretching and bodyweight isometrics performed with synchronized breathing. In addition to that, the practitioner's mind becomes peaceful due to the slow pace and focused stretching and breathing. And there are a lot of asanas and mastering them all is quite challenging. There seems to be a spiritual side to it too, but I'm not really interested in that. Ofcourse, as with any such art, a lot of discipline and rules for lifestyle are involved.

                So, after the 2 hours, I decided that if anyone ever asks me about yoga, I'd definitely recommend it. It involves a fair bit of exercise, good breathing and gives a peace of mind. A pretty decent package. For a guy who's just lying in his room for most of the time, it must work wonders. But I didn't find anything that may be useful to me. At some point or the other in the last 4 years, I had already done all of the stretching that was taught. There are a lot of exotic asanas that involve a lot of flexibility and strength at uncomfortable positions, but I do not expect them to carry over to any of the things I'm interested in. So, for a committed sportsman who knows a fair bit about stretching, muscle mechanisms and injuries, yoga won't be very appealing. It is okay to try it for a change of pace, but I do not expect any significant returns. Ofcourse, there is the improvement in breathing and the peace of mind. But then, I get these from a set of heavy squats or an all-out sprint too, and they make may stronger and faster.

                Then we had a break for lunch. After the lunch, we had some breathing exercises (go for a long run, or put a sprint. Nothing beats that). A lecture on healthy diet (I don't care much for that, I'm okay with eating whatever I can find, unless I'm on a strict diet aimed at something). How asanas can affect your behavior and thinking (I felt the claims to be greatly exaggerated). Then some general discussion which I didn't find interesting. Finally, we came to meditation. The meditation, according to the instructor, is not a part of yoga per say, but she wanted to teach us.

                Meditation has always intrigued me. I hear a lot of claims on it and always wonder how it can be so effective. So we all sit down and close our eyes. The instructor says things that usually hypnotists may say, like "you'll feel relaxed now, you are fully stress free, etc...". Before we started the meditation, the instructor told us that the mind has a frequency - 6 corresponding to our normal life, 8 to a stressed state, and 4 to a time when we're consciously not very aware, but are in sync with our subconscious. I understand that the mind may be divided into the conscious and the subconscious (the intuitive part as I understand it, nothing magical/spiritual). The instructor said that if we can tune down our mind to the frequency of 4, we can get into contact with the universe around us and reach wherever we want to. I didn't believe the theory, and as an engineer, was itching to ask for how this frequency is defined and also the units in which it's measured. But I decided not to argue, so I just listened.

                Towards the end of the meditation, she (the instructor) asked us to tell ourselves, not out loud, that we will make whatever changes we wish to make in ourselves. She asked us to fix this deeply in our subconscious. She said that if we did this kind of meditation enough times, it would get strongly fixed in our mind. I didn't find it new at all. We tell ourselves the same thing enough times, we start to believe in it. And belief in ourselves can be very effective. An incident from the summer before last comes to my mind. I was in Bangalore, training in my office gym. My squat had hit a plateau at around 100 or 105kg. A friend of mine, who dropped out of insti, was telling me about a training routine he was following and in the conversation he said something like, "squatting is all in the mind. If you believe you can't squat more than your old max, you won't. But if you believe you can push your max, you definitely will". After 3-4 days I decided to squat heavy. I was a little scared but decided to to give an all out effort and not back down - I pushed my max to 115kg, an improvement that would usually take me about 3-4 months. So what we were asked to do as part of meditation is nothing new, it is a very old principle- if you want to do something, you must start believing in it. Half efforts rarely succeed.

                This brings me to the very last part of the meditation. The instructor asked us to visualize white light all around us, and I did. Then she asked us to think of "a lot of positive energy coming into you from the universe, the universe is helping you to get strong". All my focus and peace of mind broke at that point. I tried hard to regain focus, but the best I could do was think about dragon ball Z, how the characters in that anime get very strong by taking in stuff from the universe. After a while, the meditation session ended. The instructor went on telling others how the universe cares about each of us and will help us if we can connect to it through meditation.

Some time last year, I was in full mood to watch documentaries and started downloading a lot of them on LAN. There was someting called  - 'The secret'. Expecting some kind of medieval conspiracy, I downloaded it. It started with mentioning the names of a lot of thinkers, scientists and politicians and claimed they all knew the secret, and the documentary was going to give it to me. Then came a series of people claiming to be quantum physicists, psycologists, etc... who reiterated the power of the secret and how the life of the audience can change by the knowledge of it. I was curious. After watching it for 10 more minutes, when the secret was slowly being revealed, I closed the video, unable to watch any further. It was the same thing that was told to us at the end of the meditation - if I want to do something very badly, the whole universe conspires to give it to me. I only have to wish for it very hard. Though this was not mentioned in the meditation session, the documentary went on to say that our thoughts attract things towards us, so whatever we think about too often, it just happens- good or bad. So they say we must always think positively.

                All the time, when watching that documentary and during the meditation, only 1 thing kept flashing in my mind- 'The universe is like 300 billion years old, many billion light years wide. Why does it give a damn about any of us?' I was very tempted to say this to the instructor, but decided against getting into an argument in her workshop. I did get into one though. She asked if any of us believed that we were not controlled by something outside ourself. I said I believe I have freewill, so I did not believe I was controlled. Then she went on to give examples of luck, failures despite best efforts, etc, trying to show that I don't have full control of myself, or atleast that's what it seemed like to me. I decided not to argue further. Actually, I wasn't even listening. That was the end of the workshop and I was trying to address the reason I attended the workshop. What is this all about? Why do so many people believe in it? After some thought, I reached a conclusion.

                The exercise and breathing part, it obviously benefits all those people not involved in a lot of physical activity, or those that don't know how to stretch in case of spasms and injuries. The meditation, well it gives people some peace of mind. A little time to reflect on life, make resolutions and keep telling themselves what they want to do. The thing in the end, about the whole universe trying to help us, I didn't buy that. But then, people don't care for reason. People who meditate are usually those who are stressed out. Spiritual gurus and saints meditate too, but then I think they are just jobless people not contributing to society at all, and instead living off others' hard work. If someone tells a depressed or a stressed out guy that there is hope for him and that the entire universe wants him to succeed, that's a lot of good news. They'd probably become more confident and work better, believing that they have the whole universe helping them and hence their problems can be overcome.

                So, bottomline, for a normal person who isn't skeptical and believes everything their instructors teach, yoga and meditation can do wonders. For a person who already knows his stuff, they don't make any difference and are just plain old principles given in an illusive package with lots of exotic names. If anyone asks for my opinion, I'd definitely recommend yoga and meditation to them.