My Journey Through Yoga in India
Of Personal Explorations.
My earliest memory of yoga classes in India is those conducted on the large mud grounds of a 'Patanjali Institute of Yoga,' school diagonally opposite our home.
Every morning and evening, 20-50 young men, bare-chested, in white cotton pants, formed strict lines, about 10 or 15 people wide and 5-6 deep. Led by a male yoga teacher at the front, they performed breathing and yogic exercises. It was a strictly male-focused event.
I always held the preconceived notion that these practices were associated with peculiar exercise routines rather than relaxing or meditative practices and breathing techniques. Yoga seemed more like a technical skill.
Our schools didn’t offer yoga, nor did our colleges.
It was quite surprising for me to witness the implosion of yoga in the States when it first happened. Some people in India still don’t quite get it! After all, yoga is ingrained in our culture for eons. People practice it daily - sitting cross-legged on the floor while eating, bowing down during worship in the morning, if they practice ritual worship, and, of course, those sun salutations - just wake up, turn to the East, face the rising sun, and bow with a regular Namaste - not hard, is it? Then, there is the one exercise most are happy to demonstrate for flexibility - raise your hands, stand on tip-toe, and slowly bend to touch your toes.
Countless yoga classes, at ungodly hours, are offered, some free in parks, and others paid, near residential neighborhoods, with random notice boards announcing 'Yoga Classes 5 am - 6 am,' featuring unknown teachers.
Back then, no one I knew, among my neighbors or those in school, attended. Yoga was for ‘older’ people, as we thought of it as kids, and was definitely off the beaten path.
Some yoga teachers gained notoriety for unconventional practices, particularly a form of tantric yoga which was frowned upon. Yoga was also typically associated with yogis.
Sunday mornings meant free yoga classes telecast by the national and only TV station - ‘Doordarshan’ (vision from a distance!) - where odd-looking men with long beards spoke in a monotone and did unwieldy poses.
So, kids grew up relatively safe from the benefits of yoga and from exposure to any cool role models who would have made the idea of yoga fun, relaxing, and enjoyable.
The First Yoga Class
In the States, I enjoyed reading ‘Yoga Journal,’ (for someone who did no yoga) but was still puzzled by the ‘business of yoga,’ I saw advertised on its back pages. For us, yoga was derived from Patanjali’s yoga sutras.