Floating to stay fit

SD Saxena introduces us to Jal Yoga, in which the practitioner performs various asanas on the water surface. This form of yoga is especially a boon for the disabled and weak.

Yoga is a fusion of body, mind, and soul. The Indian tradition of yoga dates back to almost a millennium and has been a source of tremendous personal and individual growth for human beings living across the Indus river and the region beyond the Himalayan range.

India led a peaceful existence due to the geographical protection and isolation from the rest of the world. This was one of the reasons for the development of the mind-body-spirit culture in India as well as the major growth of human-centric philosophy. It is a matter of great surprise and research to unravel the fact that despite little development of analytical science, Indian philosophers were able to arrive at the concepts of Advaita (the oneness of human souls), superconsciousness, and also the soul being the eternal entity, never to die, and that the death of a body does not signal the end of everything.

Union of body, mind, soul

Yoga is a practical manifestation of that philosophy. For many philosophers of India, physical wellness is driven by the inner wellbeing of the soul and the mind, and, therefore, requires a fusion of the whole ecosystem of body, mind, soul, and nature. There is a major emphasis on the various forms and stages of yoga defined as Kriya Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga, to achieve the higher stages of this fusion of mind, body, and soul.

The Bhagavad

The Gita describes a lot of these concepts. The attainment of higher stages of this fusion is very difficult to achieve. As you go higher up in Ashtanga Yoga, the numbers of achievers keep declining due to the difficulty of achieving success on the slippery path of practice. Out of a million who achieve an upgrade from stage one to two, the scale keeps reducing the number of achievers and, ultimately, the one who reaches the top is almost one in a trillion.

Difficult to practise