Yoga Therapies

"Yoga is skill in action" states the Bhagavad Gita, the best known of all the Indian philosophical epics. But this is not intended to mean action in just the narrow sense of physical movement. For as well as exercises for improving the "skill" of your body, yoga also comprises techniques that act on your mind and emotions, and provides a complete philosophy for living.

In order to achieve this aim you must develop "skill" in al aspects of your life. A great Indian teacher of this century, Sri, Aurobindo, regarded yoga as a methodical effort toward self-perfection through developing your latent potential on the physical, vital, mental, intellectual, and spiritual levels. And the most fundamental step you can take toward expanding the limits of your consciousness is to gain mastery over your mind.

This is also the key to good health and happiness in today's world. Great advances in medical science over the past century have reduced the incidence of most of the physical diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries. Ever-better drugs and surgical techniques have led to the eradication of most infectious diseases and the control of many metabolic disorders. Soon even routine genetic interventions may be possible. But these techniques are less than effective against the new and ever-more-common causes of ill health-chronic stress and psychosomatic ailments.

Conventional medicine, by concentrating on a physical and mechanistic approach to healing, can do little to relieve conditions, such as these, since they are caused more by lifestyle and attitudes than by physiological anomalies. The frenetic pace of modern life exposes many people to continuous, unrelieved stress. And if you are largely sedentary in your habits and overindulge in health-damaging substances and foods, your wellbeing and fitness will be further compromised. Eventually stress may manifest itself in the form of physical disease or mental breakdown.

Modern medicine has countered with symptom-suppressing treatments, which do little to tackle the root cause of the problem. As a result, health has come to be regarded as a static state in which disease is absent, rather than as a dynamic growth process in which you feel truly well on both the physical and mental levels. But there is no reason to settle for anything less than a positive sense of wellbeing.

Yoga has a lot to offer as we approach the 21st century. It gives us the means to complement medical technology with a holistic system of healthcare that addresses the problems of the mind and spirit, as well as those of the body. Patanjali, who wrote the classic text on yoga more than 2000 years ago, described it as "a science of the mind". And it is through teaching you to control your mind, your desires, and your reactions to stress that yoga can fundamentally help you.

Mastery of the mind involves two aspects: the ability to concentrate your attention on any given subject or object; and the capacity to first aspect to some degree, extremely few of us can lapse into inner peace even accidentally, let alone at will. Yoga is an intelligent, skilful means for making the mind quiet, rather than a brutal, mechanical technique for stopping it.

All aspects of yoga work toward this in some way, thus bringing you closer to your goal. Yoga develops your ability to maintain inner peace at all times, in all your actions, and thereby achieve physical and mental health. This calmness in action is the secret to attaining the "skill" referred to in the Bhagavad Gita.