These pranayama techniques help cool down the body and affect centres of the brain which maintain temperature control. Besides cooling the body, these techniques reduce anxiety and can be used as a cure for insomnia if practised before sleeping, says yoga expert Kamini Bobde

Click on this link to read whole article and access the Youtube video on the practice.

https://indianexpress.com/article/health-wellness/how-pranayama-can-help-you-cool-off-and-prevent-heat-strokes-8619778/

How pranayama can help you cool off and prevent heat strokes

Written by Kamini BobdeMay 20, 2023 14:22 IST

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Is your stiff neck bothering you? Try these 3 simple asanas

It is best to practise these along with other daily workouts or yoga as a preventive measure to avoid getting into a painful situation, says yoga expert Kamini Bobde

Click on the link below to read the whole article. 

https://indianexpress.com/article/health-wellness/stiff-neck-3-simple-asanas-8570221/

How Yoga can transform upto DNA level

Dharana: The key to altering Genetic coding

 by

Kamini Bobde

Yoga has emerged from the shroud of secrecy and has now adorned the cloak of scientific, rational thinking of how and why it works wonders.

And among its many wonderful effects are its capacity to change even our genetic coding.  Science refutes that such a thing is possible. Be that as it may, let us here examine how and why Yoga can affect change and transformation even at the DNA level.

Firstly, let us understand the practice and technique which can affect such a fantastic transformation. The practice is Dharana in yogic parlance and concentration in everyday language.

I will try my best here to explain how this works.

Firstly we will have to distinguish how yoga defines or looks at concentration and how it is generally understood.

The dictionary meaning of concentration is, “close attention, close thought, attentiveness, application, industry, assiduousness, single mindedness, absorption, engrossment.”

In everyday life, right from school to home, concentration is taught as something for which you have to make immense effort. Children are told to concentrate on studies or whatever they are doing. And the only impetus to concentration for a child is fear of rebuke/ punishment or at the other end, a reward. Thus the foundation of  concentration that a child learns is based on fear, stress and effort. All of this we know impacts negatively on the entire personality, physical, mental, emotional which engenders a fertile substratum for disease and illness in later life.  

In contrast here is how Yoga looks at concentration/Dharana.

Full, total pin-pointed concentration happens when:

1.    Mind & body are completely relaxed.

2.    When you are present in the here and now.

3.    The subject and the object must become one.

Relaxation:

Relaxed? What’s so difficult about being relaxed? Difficult it is not. Children are naturally relaxed. Until the world around them makes them learn stress, worry, fear. Gradually being naturally relaxed is superimposed with layers of stress, tension and fears that become deeply embedded in the psyche. Therefore, Yoga lays great stress on relaxations right from the level of asana, pranayama practice. Besides, reminding the practitioner to consciously keep the body relaxed, there are also some very simple but highly enjoyable techniques like Shava asana and Yoga nidra.

Shava means dead body. So, basically the practice is like imitating a dead body. Everyday in deep sleep we die and come back. Shava asana tries to achieve that level of relaxation. However, in sleep we lose awareness. But, in both shav asana and Yoga nidra it is total relaxation like deep sleep with full awareness. So what you are experiencing is a different quality of awareness from our normal everyday experience. Only an experience of the practice will prove to the practitioner how when you enter into a state of total relaxation your awareness becomes sharpened. Much research has been done by Stanford, Harward, UCLA corroborating therapeutic benefits and changes in the mapping of brain workings in simple practice of shava asana and yoga nidra.

Presence of mind and body in the NOW:

All self help books and all philosophies tell you to live in the present. Easier said than done. Here again Yoga helps you along through various techniques which are mostly factored-in the practice of daily simple yoga. However, for those hoping to bring about change right upto genetic level, have to do some advance practices. Just as for relaxation, so also for living in the present moment, the entire practice of yoga  is geared towards it. While doing the asanas, the constant reprieve is to focus on how each movement and posture is impacting the body. For example, if you are doing bhujang asana (cobra pose), then in every round you focus on different parts of the body that the movement and posture is impacting... spine, stomach area, chest area, throat area, legs, hands, etc. And with progress your awareness of how it is impacting your body becomes subtle and more and more incisive.

What you do not realize is that in the bargain you are for that time, living completely in the present movement. Same goes with practicing pranayama. The focus is completely on observing each and every breath. With prolonged practice of yoga in this manner, it slowly becomes a part of you to stay focused in the present with whatever you are doing. The combination of relaxed body and focused awareness has profound effects on the brain. It too becomes relaxed, still, quiet. This is very difficult to achieve because the nature of mind is to jump like a monkey from one thing to another.

Now, we come to the more esoteric aspect of concentration/dharana. The subject and object becoming one or as J. Krishnamurthy is famously known to say , “the seer becomes the seen.”

This is the culmination of the earlier two techniques into dharana. So, when you’ve achieved the state of total relaxation and being in the present, then comes the third practice which culminates into dharana/concentration.

There are many techniques or practices one can adopt according to one’s personality and liking. There are many many techniques for developing concentration. In the Vigyan Bhairava Tantra, shlokas 25 to 35 are all about the various techniques for dharana.

Trataka is one such practice. After your asana and pranayama practice, you fix keep a candle flame, a Om symbol, or your favourite God, a rising sun or just about any symbol/object at eye level. Siting comfortably, if possible in padma asana, vajrasan or any of the meditation poses, you look unblinkingly at the symbol/object. When your eyes tire or tear up, you close your eyes and try to see that candle flame, Om or whatever the object you have chosen, at the eyebrow centre. At first it may be difficult but with practice it will happen. If all other yogic practices are developed culminating into this practice, then one does experience seeing your symbol with eyes closed at the eye brow centre.

It’s quite an event in one’s life when this happens. Firstly, that vision of your symbol at the eyebrow centre ( ajna chakra, bhrumadhya) is nothing like what you see in the external world. This internal manifestation is totally different and an experience which shakes up your entire being. At this point you take a quantum leap and every faculty, aspect of your being and personality undergoes transformation. The transformation happens to the cell and DNA level. This is now being established in experiments being done in many universities and medical centres around the world. 

All of this I’ve gained from my reading of books by Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati and Swami Satyasangananda Sarawati who are the light and force of the Bihar School of Yoga & Rikhiapeeth ashram.

If anything is not clear, or you have any doubt or misgiving, I would love to help resolve the doubt or answer your query to the best of my ability.

Hari Om!

What is Yoga?

A short concept note for the uninitiated
by
Kamini Bobde

 Yoga is an ancient wisdom which has come to us from the God’s themselves as a knowledge given by Lord Shiva in answer to Parvati’s question on how to find liberation from the cycle of birth & death.  It has a whole history and heritage of Rishis, sages, sadhus and Sants who over the ages have preserved & contributed to this ancient experience-based knowledge right up to Patanjali and more recently Swami Satyananda Saraswati who has given to the world Yoga Nidra and Shankprakshalan.

Yoga, as any practitioner will experience, works on multi-dimensional levels of  your body. It is not something that will only tone up your muscles while  neglecting the other life sustaining organs like heart, brain etc. It works not only on the physical aspect but also on your mental, emotional and finally- spiritual state.

A person may be suffering from High BP may be short tempered and thus affecting his family life. As a Yoga Teacher you will be able to help him in not only managing his BP problem but without any re-course to psycho-analysis or any mental, intellectual sparring, help him alter his temperament through Yoga.

Yoga we can say works on the gross, subtle & causal. At the gross level it works on the heart, the digestive system, the endocrinal system, the hormonal glands as also the central nervous system. At the subtle level it works on the energy centres, the neural pathways, the vital life force, called prana. At the causal level it helps break free of ego, conflict, and the prison of one’s own limitations.

The corner-stone of Yoga is awareness. If you practice Yoga and do not emphasize on awareness then you are merely doing physical exercise not asanas, pranayama or Yoga. Yoga is not an ego-boosting indulgence of doing difficult postures to win the admiration and exclamations of the uninitiated. If you are looking to Yoga to contort your body in awe-inspiring poses, then you might as well go and join a circus and become a rubber doll.

 Normally, the body uses you. The sense organs lead you to over-eating, comforts, indulgences. The body uses you and the senses lead the mind. In Yoga, you use the body and the mind leads the senses. The idea is to free yourself of the body so as to experience beyond that which is known only through the senses. So, don’t get stuck with the pride of doing difficult asanas. The asanas are only to relieve you of your bodily discomforts, maladies, illnesses, etc so that you may be able to finally sit for hours in meditation to reach the ultimate goal of Yoga….your union with the Supreme.

Raja Yoga, also called the Royal Path of yoga, is ideally suited for people living, working, within the confines of the world. You need not give up anything or retire to the mountains to follow the path of Raja Yoga.

A daily therapeutic practice of Yoga involves limbering up asanas to begin with, then stretching, bending the spine laterally, forward, backward, twisting. This is to strengthen the spine and also clean up the central nervous system. Then there are other asanas which tone up the hormonal system, the endocrinal system, the digestive system.

Asanas, thus work on a multi-dimensional level on the body and get it into a good state, removing all blockages, maladies so that prana, the subtle life force can freely move in the whole body. Prana, is distinct from your breath. ( See Pranam to Prana... in this blog for more on Prana.) 

This is then followed up with pranayama which works on the subtle systems, like neural pathways & psychic centres of the body.

As one perfects the asanas, pranayama, you then introduce, subtler practices of Dharana ( Concentration) and Dhyana ( Meditation). This finally leading to Samadhi.

This is the progression in which Yoga works on you. 

Yoga is union. Further, it is Viyoga, that is separation. It is separation of energy from matter for the ultimate union of the self with the Supreme.

Hari Om!!

Beauty Through yoga

                                               Beauty Through Yoga 

                                                 by 

                                             Kamini Bobde

Beauty is skin deep, is a well known adage, but the portend of this message  penetrates people’s minds just as deep. Beauty has been shrink-wrapped into specific parameters of skin colour, height and figure. This kind of brain washing by the commercial world and the media is producing dissatisfied individuals who are trying to attain the unattainable, that is, uniformity in appearance. To want to look good is not a crime but to be slave to it is a crime against one’s own self.

The truth of the matter is that a healthy mind and body are essential for beauty, a kind of beauty which gives joy and happiness both to the possesser and admirer. Not the Hollywood actor Maryln Manroe kind of beauty which the whole world gasped at but Maryln was miserable enough to end it in it’s prime. But the poet said, “A thing of beauty is joy forever”  Which is true. Only the concept of beauty has to be understood.  

What are these attributes of beauty which are joy forever? What about the wrinkled, wizened beauty of a Mother Theresa?

Therefore, before I talk about beauty through yoga it is essential to settle what we mean by beauty and what is achievable through yoga. I am definitely not talking about altering your nose length or rubbing off wrinkle lines with butox.

  

A glowing complexion, sparkling eyes, a strong steady gait, well toned body are attributes of an attractive personality. All of these are attainable simply through the daily practice of yoga or practice of asanas.

 A major attribute of beauty is also appeal which goes beyond mere looks. It is the over all personality of the person. Bad temperament, like arrogance, anger, or negative, depressive dispositions can cancel out all appeal and make a person unattractive. While asanas take care of the physical fitness of a person, the other daily practices like, pranayam, pratyhara, dharna, dhyana and samadhi take care in correcting the mental, emotional and temperamental problems. In short a healthy mind, body and spirit is what results in a beautiful person which is highly achievable through yoga.  

Men and women alike are these days obsessed with retaining youthful looks and vigour in life. Here I would like to relate what was achieved in death by Paramhansa Yogananda which is a proof of what can be achieved through the practice of yoga. Paramhansa Yogananda who is immortalized through his book, “Autobiography of a yogi”, spread the message of yoga and kriya in the west. He lived largely in the west and took Mahasamadhi in Los Angeles, California, on March 7, 1952.

The body of Yogananda was kept for more than 20 days and here is a reproduction of the notorized letter of Mr. Henry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director, in which he wrote how weeks after his death, Yoganand’s face shone and there was no sign of any decay. “The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramhansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience…No odour of decay emanated from his body at any time. On March 27th there was no sign to say that his body had suffered any visible physical disintegration at all.”

While Yogananda was an exceptional spiritual person, but from what he achieved even in death it is clear that if one were to adopt  yoga in some measure in our lives we can hope to arrest decay and destruction of our bodies.

In this column, I will outline briefly how a daily package of yoga can bestow you with beauty.

Asanas are so designed as to revitalize your various organs, exercise your muscles and oxygenate your blood and cells and throw out toxins.

Very often a dull complexion, mousy hair, pimples, pigmentation are result of  bad digestive system, hormonal imbalances, lack of exercise and bad lifestyle. Here I would like to tell you about a young girl who had an unfortunate skin allergy which would darken her skin, and her face would break out in itchy red eruptions. Only a daily application of cortisone cream would suppress it. Realising that at some point the cortisone would stop working, she took recourse to yoga. Her teacher found that she had chronic constipation problem and she was unduly stressed out about studies. A combination of this resulted in accumulated toxins trying to escape through her the pores of her skin which resulted in the eruptions. Ten days of asanas, pranayam brought her problem under control. Then cleansing her digestive system through “Shankprakshalan”, eliminated her problem completely. Now, she takes care to see that her system is cleansed and keeps her stress under control with pranayam and meditation.

 A daily practice of asanas as prescribed by a good yoga teacher designed for specific personality and body constitution takes care of  maladies and health problems due to mal function of disgestive, hormonal, system  in our bodies.

Asanas followed by pranayam (breathing control), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses) , dharna ( one pointedness) and dhyana ( meditation)  relieve stress and over a period bring about a balance in one’s attitudes and outlook on life. It is important in any practice of yoga to realize that any amount of reading, or mere intellectual understanding is useless and the only way to fully know what each of the above mentioned practices are is to experience through daily practice under the guidance of good teacher.