Yoga in Modern Life

Yoga is a science of healthy living. For a common man yoga is a fashion for keeping himself healthy and fit. While for some others its a boon for developing their concentration, memory and creativity. It helps to improve muscle strength, stamina, emotional stability and maintain a positive physical and mental health.

The practice of yoga, with a history going back thousands of years is being challenged to demonstrate its relevance in the modern world, and at the same time, to adapt the practices to the circumstances and needs of modern time.

Yoga with its multiform advantages, is gaining popularity in all parts of the world. For a common man yoga is a fashion for keeping himself healthy and fit. While for some others its a way of developing their concentration, memory and creativity.

Need for Yoga

Many of the common health and social problems cannot be solved through germ theories, antibiotics, vaccines or surgeries. The fascinating diagnostic tools has started pointing to the role of mind on matter. Biochemical, psychological, neuro-physiological and immunological researchers are recognizing the role of lifestyle, stress, suppressed emotions and so on as the cause of many of the challenges faced today. Hence health professionals are forced to accept the paradigm shift in the approach of understanding human health problems.

Understanding Yoga

In traditional terminology, yoga“it is the union of the individual self with the universal self”. “It is an expansion of the narrow constricted egoistic personality to an all pervasive, eternal and blissful state of reality”. As Swami Vivekananda puts it, “It is a means of compressing one’s evolution into a single life or a few months or even a few hours of one’s bodily existence“. In action, yoga is a special skill which makes the mind reach it subtler state.

Yoga can be broadly classified into four streams. As Swami Vivekananda puts them as Work, Worship, Philosophy and Psychic Control.

• The path of work involves doing action with an attitude of detachment to fruits of action. This brings steadiness of mind.
• The control of emotions is the key to the path of worship. It helps to control the emotional instabilities by properly harnessing the energy involved in it.
• The path of Philosophy is for attaining the intellectual sharpness and happiness.
• The path of Psychic Control enables us to culture our minds for achieving success in almost all endeavors of our lives. It gives a practical and easy approach to reach higher states of consciousness.

Thus these four streams of yoga helps man to develop his personality at four different levels – physical, mental, intellectual, emotional, and simultaneously brings about spiritual progress.