Focus on your movements and on your breathing while practising yogasanas to keep your body and mind healthy, writes ANANDMURTI GURUMAA
The human body is an important vehicle, besides being a tool for spiritual growth. If your body is not healthy for a prolonged period of time, you will not even be able to meditate or do any sadhana. So, first and foremost keep your body healthy. Asanas do not provide Health benefits alone. The word ‘asana’ means kaya sthiram — that which steadies the body and comforts you.
In Sirsasana, the body goes upside down. One needs to train oneself to get the right coordination and balance to be still and steady as well as comfortable in sirsasana. This is often called the king of asanas. One can derive great benefits from this asana, since we are always standing on our feet. This asana increases blood flow to the brain, lungs, and several other organs. The heart rests because it does not have to work against gravity to push the blood up. This rush of blood soothes and calms all organs with oxygenated blood and thus ensures perfect functioning of the body.
Similarly, Sarvangasana is called the queen of all asanas. It has a specific effect on the thyroid and parathyroid glands. Every asana has a particular effect on specific organs and muscles. Therefore, one needs to have an in-depth understanding of asanas, including the right way to do them.
Mindful Movements
Since asanas have a profound effect on your body, it is important to perform them with awareness. If you are doing leg-raises, then you should raise and lower your legs with awareness, being alert to the action. If you don’t move your legs with awareness, then it is not an asana, but merely a form of exercise. Asanas should be done with awareness of body and breath.
In Tadasana, you raise your arms straight up while breathing in. When you raise your arms while breathing in, oxygen reaches all parts of the lungs — posterior, anterior, superior and inferior. When you breathe in without raising your arms, only the upper, and to some extent, the middle part of the lungs is oxygenated and carbon dioxide accumulates in the rest of the lungs. Carbon dioxide is toxic to the body and the accumulation of toxins is akin to inviting illness and early death. While performing asanas, it is extremely important to keep the mind alert, to remain aware, and establish coordination with the breath. Yoga practitioners say that if your spine is young, you are young — so to keep your spine young, you should practise all asanas which make the spine flexible and strong, including Bhujangasana, Sarpasana, Makarasana, Ushtrasana and Kandharasana — all these are good for the spine. And learn them under the guidance of a yoga practitioner only.
According to Hatha Yoga, a major advantage of doing asanas is that they have a direct effect on our chakras —mooladhara, manipura, swadhisthana, anahata, vishuddha, ajna, sahasrara — thus helping immensely in the awakening of chakras. While doing an asana, you are also breathing in rhythm; this balances the ida and pingala nadi and helps in activating the sushumna nadi. It may seem that you are doing asanas, but actually you are preparing for the opening of the chakras and awakening of the kundalini. If your mooladhara and swadhisthana chakras are not activated, you cannot be free of desires, no matter how much knowledge you gather by listening to spiritual discourses.
The mooladhara chakra controls all the systems related to waste elimination at both the physical as well as psychological level, and is the point where all primal urges are stored. All your longings and desires are trapped in the swadhisthana chakra.
The mechanism of this chakra is so subtle that its understanding is beyond the intellect of an average person. Our conscious mind is unaware about how the swadhisthana chakra controls our samskaras or our mental impressions, choices, decisions and actions. Even your friends are, in a way, selected by the swadhisthana. No one can control the mind and body without activating the swadhisthana chakra. Health & Healing Through Yogan
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