Would you like to turn your life upside down? Perhaps yes, if you… don’t like the situation you are in… or feel bogged down by your own decisions… or failures are turning you into an angry vampire.

I used to feel I am wasting my life — intimidated by the rejections of research papers, given up on my out-of-control and fragile health, devoid of all of the many ambitions I had for my life — claiming all the Gods will happily give me moksham (liberation) at the moment if I wished to! This was August 2017. After about an year, the external circumstances are still the same (if not worse) — no accepted research papers — however, my health is in my full control and all my ambitions are back and stronger. What happened? I started learning Yoga.

Yoga is not just a randomly picked set of physical and breathing exercises; it’s a complete package that takes care of your physical, mental and spiritual well-being. Another plus-point: you can do it throughout your life, irrespective of the place you live in and your age, the only required accessory being your body (more on why is the body an “accessory” later). As a result, even if you are not interested in the real meaning of Yoga as per its origins in ancient Vedic scriptures, it’s a wonderful skill to learn and practise whenever you feel the need arises.

There are various schools of Yoga around the world. One good thing that every standard school’s philosophy clearly highlights is that none of them is better than the others; they all are the means to achieve the same end. In fact, this is one of the beauties of the Yoga philosophy that kept me in its stride: “Do what you can, don’t criticize or compare with others, you are the one who gets the experience”. My teacher is from the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center, which is famous for following a medically-verified sequence of the various exercises.

The Sivananda Yoga system focuses on five fundamental points:

Proper exercise: physical postures (called asanas) that keep your glands, muscles, joints, and internal organs flexible and healthy. Proper breathing: proper inhale and exhale routines (called pranayamas) that take care of the overall energy levels (prana), thus rejuvenating and strengthening your nervous system. Proper relaxation: systematic interval-based relaxing poses that allow the blood circulation and energy levels to assimilate in the whole body. Proper diet: an in general healthy diet that is nutritious and effective. Positive thinking and meditation: required for making a healthy progress in any goal.

I started with points 1–3, and found the last two happening automatically over time; YMMV. One very important thing that plays a very important role in Yoga is regularity. Though progress will happen even if you are not regular, imbibing Yoga as a routine may shower wonders.

How to measure progress? As Yoga is primarily based on individual experience, the signs of progress are very personal. My experiences have been the following: (i) looking forward to the next session (as my teacher Katyayini madam says, “Yoga quickly becomes a useful addiction!”); (ii) getting less agitated with negative things, that is, a balance of mind; (iii) increased concentration and confidence, resulting in being able to find problems and solutions faster; (iv) noticeable improvement in physical health — consistent weight-loss, enhanced immunity, normalization of pulse rate and blood pressure, trouble-free digestion, etc.; (v) getting time to do my hobbies in the same 24-hour day, and so on — I can write a complete post on this!

Literally, ‘yoga’ means ‘union’. That is, the union of the individual soul with the infinite soul for the dualist (dwait), and the realization of the Self as the infinite soul for the nondualist (adwaita); both are in fact the same. Thus, along with physical and mental well-being, Yoga has the depth to satiate the spiritual being of the seeker too. The ultimate goal of Yoga (like Karma, Jnana, and Bhakti — the paths to freedom/liberation/realization in Vedanta philosophy) is to answer the eternal question in everybody’s mind. To do this, we use the body (as a tool or accessory) to control the mind, so that we can meditate on the soul.

In essence, Yoga (i) gives you strength to face the challenges of life, (ii) helps in visualizing yourself and the world from a different, higher angle, in a way that the cause-effect cycle for all the troubles and pleasures appears to be detachable, and (iii) guides you in your journey towards infinite existence (sat), infinite knowledge (chit) and infinite bliss (anand). And when everything is infinite/complete, what is the need to worry!