Wellness is not about torturing your body

How do you know when the struggle for fitness turns into signs of wellness? Or whether it results in body trauma?

If you are one of those to whom punishing the body is the surest path to making yourself well, then think again. Jogging like a fanatic causes trauma not fitness; medical evidence shows damage to your limbs and even to your heart. Lifting weights may make some of your muscles show off, and ok if you are training to be Mr. Universe, but if unbalanced can hurt you as many before you have discovered.

Your body needs to be respected, not tortured. Struggle for what you think as fitness cannot be the path of hurting yourself. That is the reason thousands of young women starve themselves and throw up what little they eat, and endure bulimia, in the quest to look thin and attractive. In the process they damage themselves, both in body and mind irretrievably.

Being thin or fat, or being short or tall, does not mean fitness, in as much as fitness reflects wellness. You can be thin and unwell, and fat and well. Some of it depends on how the body is maintained, but a lot of it depends on how the mind is maintained. Your body follows the mind, not the other way around. You can truly think your way into fitness.

Over the last few weeks I have been going through an amazing experience that has changed the way I think about my body. Without effort I have been able to do with my body I have not dared to do for years now. I have not been able to sit on the floor for many years now. I had an injury to my knee, and folding my knees created pain. As I went through this incredible program, I started sitting on the floor without even thinking about it. I was able to move my body in ways I would have never dared to earlier.

This program is called Nithya Yoga and is now being taught in Singapore. It has been developed by a great Master, who I met hardly a year ago and whose teachings had tremendously influenced me. Now this physical, or what I thought was physical, exercise enabled me to do things with my body based on how influenced my mind.

Nithya yoga is unlike any other yoga that I have done, read or watched. It has nothing do with torturing your body in complicated postures or practicing in high heat and sweating. There is no emphasis on controlling your breath in order to cure one illness or another.

Nithyananda, creator of Nithya Yoga says:

"Twisting body into pretzel-like poses is simply that. It is not yoga.
People often think that yoga is all about physical exercise and breath control. They can be concluding this from the poses that a Yogi, practitioner of Yoga, maintains. The expertise with which a yogi performs and maintains the positions appears to them as yet another kind of physical activity.

But this is the last thing Yoga was meant to be! It is a far cry from what yoga is all about. Yoga has many deeper levels. At every level, a marvelous and almost miraculous blending of the mind and the body takes place.

Let us watch our mind at work. It does not move in a linear progression. The thoughts are not connected to each other logically or sequentially. Thoughts jump from one idea to the next. One thought keeps us in the present, while the successive thought can be in future.

In an advanced yoga practitioner, the mind and the body are in balance and harmony. The regular practice of yoga leads us from the body into our mind. Intense practice of yoga leads us beyond the mind. It will lead us beyond the body and mind into a state of our spirit where we become aware of the truth of our Existence.

Yoga, a Sanskrit word, is understood to mean Union. This union refers to the melting of human self with the divine or the Cosmic Power. Truly speaking, Yoga does not mean Union, it means Uniting. Yoga is the process of Uniting, not the end result of Union.
The process of Uniting helps transcend one’s identification with the mind body system. A Yogi transcends the body and mind identification through a process of meditation, into a true awareness of his spiritual identity. His mind and body are perfectly in-tune with the vibrations and energies of the cosmos.

This awareness brings another welcome side effect—bliss! We now walk the path of bliss or Ananda while doing our Yoga. The ever blissful union of the cosmic energy with a human mind is Ananda Yoga.

The bliss that results from practice of Yoga is not a goal or end result that is aimed at. It is an experience of just walking the path of Yoga. When the path is right, the Yogi says, the destination you reach is always right, it is always blissful.
This is what is taught in Nithya Yoga programs."

It is not necessary for any one to understand the philosophy behind what this great Master says to derive the effects of Nithya Yoga. There are people in the class who had never heard of him before, and they experienced the same transformational experiences that I did.

One of the meditation techniques we use in Nithya Yoga is based on Vipassana, the Buddhist meditation. Here is how it is done.

Sit comfortably, either in a chair or cross legged on the floor, with your spine, neck and head in one line. Relax completely. Close your eyes. Now, watch your breath. Do not try to control, just witness your breath. Watch the way the breathe moves in and out, some times from one nostril, some times from another.

Focus on the upper lip and the breath. Witness the way the breath moves on the upper lip, over different parts. Note the flow, the temperature and the texture. Note the way it changes again and again.

Watch the breath and do nothing else for 20 minutes. You will find your attention moving inwards. What you may hear from outside will no longer bother you. You will be a witness. You will be centered.

written by Mr.Joseph Guan, PhD, Energy Psychologist after doing Nithya Yoga course.