Patanjali yoga

P Jadumani Singh *

1st International Day of Yoga celebrated by AMAND, Pune at Wanawadi, Pune on 21 June 2015 :: Pix - Ajit Salam

Now in the world, there are many names of newly produced Yoga practices, but commonly we may name two types of yoga i.e. Patanjali Yoga and Hatha Yoga. Hatha Yoga is widely practised in the present world because of its system for attaining the harmonious development of body, mind and soul- perfect physical and mental health. Patanjali, father of Yoga who lived in 400 BC, in his sutras (aphorisms) wrote that harmonious development of body, mind and soul can be obtained through the eight-fold path of yoga, which will be studied in the following paragraphs.

Different aspects of Yoga such as Jnana Yoga (practice of acquiring knowledge), Karma Yoga (practice of action, activity, enterprises), Bhakti Yoga (practice of worship to control mind) and Raja Yoga (practice of concentration and meditation) etc have come under the fold of Patanjali Yoga. Swami Vivekananda, Swami Satchidananda, B.K. Iyengar, Rabi Shankar, Baba Ramdev etc are Indian sages and preachers of Patanjali Yoga. Patanjali yoga fell into obscurity for nearly 700 years from 12th to 19th century and instead the Bhagavat Gita, text on Hatha yoga etc were quite dominant literatures among the Indian people.

Due to efforts of Swami Vivekananda, Patanjali yoga made a comeback in 19th century and gained popularity in India and abroad in 20th century.

The Yoga developed by Patanjali is known as 'Astanga yoga' because he emphasised that the harmonious development of body, mind and soul can be obtained through eight fold-path or eight limbs of Yoga which are (1) Yama (2) Niyama (3) Asana (4) Pranayama (5) Pratyahara (6) Dharna (7) Dhyana and (8) Samadhi which are explained below:

1.Yama-It is self control of our mind and 'be disciplined'. Yama controls i) Ahimsa (non-violence) (ii) Satya (truth) (iii) Asteya (not stealing) (iv) Brahmachari (a person who aims to get the real divinity of life. Brahmachari does not apply only to unmarried persons but it applies to persons who try to get divinity of life through careful control of mind on all aspects) and (v) Aparigraha (not to take or keep things more than the requirement) (2) Niyama-Rule and principle of keeping our body healthy and good character are in the perview of Niyama.

Niyama may be classified into five constituents namely

(i) Swach (neat and clean) Keeping our body neat and clean makes our mind peaceful and perfect quality of life)

(ii) Santosh (self contentment, no jealousy for wealth)

(iii) Tap (determined restriction on eating, drinking etc till the goal of our desire is achieved. One best is to do Pranayama daily or any of our choice)

(iv) Swadhyai (study of some lessons of his choice daily) and

(v) Ishorpranidhan (prayer and surrender into God without looking at the wrong or right, good or bad).

(3) Asana (physical posture of the body) 'Asana' is derived from a Sanskrit word 'As' which means seating or to remain sitting. According to Patanjali, asana is only bodily seating without external support and with head, neck and spine erect.

(4) Pranayama – It is the cleansing of the body with air or control of the Pran which is invisible and makes our life alive. This practice helps in extraction of carbon dioxide and other toxic gases from the body. We all living beings require breath to remain alive. All these processes of breath for our living are due to the action of Pran. Patanjali said that practice of pranayama correctly and carefully will bring divinity of life to us.

(5) Pratyahara – It is avoidance of undesirables in taking action i.e. knowing the proper action that we intent to take. Our mind, sense etc should not be controlled by outside subjects and should be kept under control from the influence of external undesirables so that there will be no hindrance on our way of divine life. We require to do pranayama daily to reach the stage of Pratyahara.

(6) Dharna – It is the fixing of your mind or focusing your attention on one point at a place or a point. It is the concentration of your mind on any object without diversion of it to any other. Dharna is the primary step of Raja Yoga. And its advance stage is Dhyana (meditation) after which we have to proceed lastly to Samadhi (separating our soul from our physical body to merge into godly world i.e. the jibatma merging into the paramatma). If a man acquires this power of Dharna (concentration of mind), he becomes master of his own mind and controls its fluctuation.

(7) Dhyana – The relaxed dwelling of the mind in a single thought for longer and longer duration is called dhyana (meditation). Now-a days the benefits of Transcental meditation are in the treatment of psychosomatic ailments. Meditation is the process of keeping the mind fixed on one object or thought for some time without any disturbance. When our mind is not relaxed we cannot practise meditation and so we should be tension free persons.

During meditation, the Yogis direct their attention to certain subtle centres in the body called chakras. These are responsible for equal distribution of energy to the body. The seven chakras are – Muladhara at the base of the spine, the Svadhisthana between the navel and genital organs, the Manipura in the area of the navel, the Anahata in the heart region, the Vishuddha in the throat with the thyroid gland, the Ajna between the eyebrows and the sahasrara on the top of the head.

Features of meditation (extract from positive health by Dr. Nagarathna) are: (i) Mind dwells on single thought of choice (ii) deep relaxation of all parts of the body (iii) reduced metabolic rate by slowing of breath (iv) freshness, lightness and a feeling of expansion at mental level and (v) continuous awareness.

(8) Samadhi – It is the last of the eight stages of Astanga yoga of Patanjali. Samadhi means the separating the soul from our body to merge into godly world i.e. Jibatma uniting/merging into Paramatma. To come to the practice of Samadhi, we have first to do Dharna and Dhyana in order. The real absorption of the mind on the object in the Dhyana for longer duration without its diversion to anywhere is the way to Samadhi where the appearance of the object disappears and also where union with self or self-realization takes place.

At this stage one has attained enlightenment. In this world of chemical foods and mental tension, we require one exercise for harmonious development of body, mind and soul, and also for staying young and retarding ageing process by sparing one hour daily.