My experience with 'Yoga'!

The International Day of Yoga - June 21st 

As the world is celebrating today the International Yoga Day, I wish each and everyone a very happy day of Yoga. Hope the celebrations will continue with the same or more intensity as with which the day is being celebrated across the nations today. 

Until an year before, I never thought I would do 'Yoga' ever in my life. Hailing from a rationalist family, the questioning has come naturally to me. As along as something is unanswered, I'm not for it. This was my attitude about Yoga too. What was it all about and how would it make a difference were a couple of specific questions I had. For which I obviously looked for the answers from outside. Of course, I thought a lot and looked for some probable answers from within, but in my experience Yoga never existed and there was nothing to get answered from within, for the understandable reasons. 

During the June last year, I had attended an Inner Engineering session organized by the Isha Foundation at Trivandrum while I was holidaying there. Only I know how much resistant I was about Yoga and that session. Somehow I turned it all around with a simple thought that "I will not let this time go wasted. If I'm here in the session already, I will give my hundred percent". There were twenty odd participants, all were from the companies placed in the techno park. The classes were held from 6 to 9 am. Trivandrum and June means rains. Incessant. Almost all the sessions were started right on time and ended just on time. I was not late to any single class. I truly enjoyed my early morning's walk, in a little drizzling, to the class. The way I was on time on everyday surprised me and there was one more thing that surprised me further. I did not think that I could do Yoga and sit patiently for about two hours every day in the morning without having breakfast. I also remember doing whopping blog posts  during those days. I was happy, very happy throughout. May be, I thought, largely because I was on vacation! 

I did not think that all I was taught during those seven days would work for me. For me, the last day was just another formal completion of a training session. But something unknown factor kept me practicing the 'Kriya' twice a day for the next forty days. I did in train, I did in the early morning and late in the night. I did it without amiss, for me that was the biggest surprise for those couple of months. After doing all that I was still not in a belief that something good was happening to me, something different was happening to me. Not then and not even after a few months. 

Now, it's been exactly one year since I started doing Yoga. I would not at all say that this experience is fabulous or this and that. But that experience is new. Its something different. As I look at it, my health has improved. My resistance power towards the cold and cough has increased undeniably. Now I can confidently sleep under ceiling fan running in high speed, I can drink cool drinks, I can eat ice cream. Actually, I'm confident about my health that it will not bother me much like it used to do once. There are some small other changes, in a positive sense, that I've come across. But mostly, what I still think is that its not actually the Yoga that I do but the feeling that I do Yoga keeps me going, keeps me believing that I will withstand the illness. This is strange, but this is what I feel, for now at least. May be, if I come across another dimension all myself, I might think about it differently. The thought that I do Yoga makes me physiologically and emotionally strong. But I must admit that there were few moments, my moments basically, while I was doing Yoga, I felt lost yet ecstatic. I do not know what's all that about yet. But doing Yoga, in the above terms, has acted positive on me. I'm drawn closer towards the thoughts of Sadguru, the founder of the Isha Foundation. I know that I'm not yet there, but may be I'm on the unknown journey. Result of which is presumably unknown but I'm keeping it open. Miracles do happen.  

Somehow I feel, spirituality is inherently in me. May be, its there in everyone. It has to be nurtured to get awaken. Do it yourself in your own style. Do not copy!!! Be thoughtful, unique and yourself.