HEALTH
The Perks of Being a Yogi
Anna Khayretdinova
BSPU,
Blagoveshchensk (Russia)
These days it is becoming increasingly
popular to be engaged in any kind of sport or
p h y s i c a l a c t i v i t y, to t h e ex te nt t h a t
sometimes it seems like all your peers have
suddenly exposed their hidden athletic
talents. People of all ages buy expensive sport
equipment and coaching programs, scroll
through healthy diet articles, argue about
what protein is better for muscle growth.
But in my opinion all these are the
professional sportsmen`s concern, and
professional sport has nothing to do with
being healthy. In this huge variety of all sorts of
physical activities my choice is yoga.
Another myth connected with yoga is
that you have to believe in weird creatures like
m a n y - h a n d e d S i va o r e l e p h a nt - fa c e d
Ganesha. That is not necessary at all. People
start practicing yoga for different reasons:
some of them want to have spiritual
experience, some simply want to increase
flexibility, relieve stress, eliminate anxiety,
some people saw pretty pictures on
Instagram and felt like it’s easier than lifting
weights (spoiler: it is not).
I started practicing yoga in 2015 out of a
simple interest, and it has never left me since.
Of course, developing skills in yoga is a slow,
difficult and sometimes rather hurtful
progress, but once I notice how much I’ve
changed through the months, it gives me
inexpressible joy and desire to carry on.
Let’s learn some basics of yoga to
continue discussing it. Yoga has eight equally
important parts to work on: yama (moral
advice), niyama (strict behavior rules), asana
(different poses), pranayama (breathing
exercises), pratyakhara (acknowledging your
feelings and addressing them to your core),
dkharana (concentration), samadkhi
(mindfulness). It goes without saying that it’s
nearly impossible to practice every aspect of
yoga in our modern hectic life, but even if you
try to focus on a few parts of it, yoga will make
a huge positive impact on your life. Frankly
speaking, all eight aspects are mostly for
yoga-instructors or people who are willing to
challenge themselves by ashtanga-yoga
(“ash” is “eight” and “tanga” is “way” in
Sanskrit). For example, one of the yamas is the
so-called akhimsa, which literally means “no
violence”. So if a person tries to comprehend
the “eight-way” yoga and eats meat, it
automatically means that he supports the
violence in this world, and the first step of this
spiritual “journey” is closed for him.
Let me ask you, what associations
come to your mind right away when someone
says “yoga”? I bet it’ll be something like a
skinny Hindu man with awfully tangled long hair
and a tilak * , sitting in a lotus pose. Fortunately,
nowadays yoga has spread all over the
Western world, and there’s no need to
become that Hindu man. All you need is a yoga
mat (or any not slippery mat) and a will to
discover the unlimited abilities of your mind
and body. Here I’d like to dispel one of the
most popular myths about yoga: it is NOT
about binding your body in knots, it is a
complex and profound practice requiring
constant mind work and concentration.
*A white or red mark on the men’s forehead,
female mark (a red dot) is called bindi
68
SUNRISE
February 2019 №2