Yoga’s revival in India tied in to its growth in the West

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India on the occasion of International Day of Yoga celebrations, New Delhi, India

By Mohan Ashtakala

When the United Nations, under the guidance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, declared June 21 to be the International day of yoga, it marked a remarkable turnaround for the ancient spiritual practice in its home country. Modi’s request at the United Nations received overwhelming support from 177 countries.

But strangely, in its home country of India, yoga was not valued even till a few decades ago. “In the 1930s, under the British, yoga was not respected”, B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the giants of modern yoga narrated. “I feel that only after yoga took roots in the west, Indians also opened up it,” he added.

One of the overarching goals of British colonialism was to replace traditional Indian knowledge with an English one. The two main reasons for this: one, to generate leaders and administrators who would be more capable administrators of the Empire and secondly, to create a more subservient nation which would not value its own culture and adopt the British one, and thus prolong colonial rule. An English education would become a prerequisite for entry into the powerful and lucrative government services, as well as the lingua-franca of mobility in the Empire.

One of the more important decisions taken by the colonial administration was to replace Sanskrit education with an English one. In this, they were extraordinarily successful. Sanskrit education, once remarkably widespread throughout India, served as the conduit for Indian traditions such as Yoga, Ayurveda and Hindu philosophical systems, but is, currently, practically dead. Furthermore, the governments that followed Indian independence, which inherited the colonialist administration system, viewed with suspicion most forms of Indian traditional systems of knowledge.

Swami Prabhupada

While Iyengar or Pattabhi Jois and others may get intellectual support for their work in popularizing yoga in the West, the main proponents of yoga must be the “gurus” of the sixties and the seventies, such as Yogananda, Swami Vishnu Devananda, Yogi Bhajan, and Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who introduced Bhakti yoga to the west. These teachers moved to America, set up ashrams and schools and worked at the ground level with their American students and followers. Their work, along with others such as Neem Karoli Baba, Swami Radha, Amritananda Mayi and others, have been, and continue to be, much more important in yoga’s spread.

But even more important are the thousands of individual Western teachers, mostly women, who invested their own money to open up of yoga studios and train teachers around the world. Organizations such as the Yoga Alliance, among others, have been the backbone by which this effort succeeded.

Swami Ramdev

And the ripple effects of this explosion can now be felt in India. The work of Swami Ramdev, from the mid nineteen-nineties, has been seminal. In Haridwar, India, he has established the world’s largest center for Yoga and Ayurveda, called Patanjali Yogpeeth. It includes a Yoga University, an Ayurvedic hospital, a yoga hall of 25,000 square meters, a thousand apartments for guests, conference halls, cafeterias, and several apartment blocks for permanent residents.

India has now embraced yoga. Examples abound: the Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, has made yoga compulsory for its employees; it is now being taught in all government schools; thousands daily attend yoga camps, and even the Indian army practices yoga. And under the leadership of the current Prime Minister, India’s trend of reclaiming her cultural and historical heritage is now gathering momentum.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper - A Novel." www.yogazapper.com 

Sources:

https://mariawirthblog.wordpress.com/2015/05/30/a-yogi-revives-yoga-in-india/

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/yoga-a-compulsory-subject-in-govt-run-schools-teacher-training-courses-smriti-irani/

http://www.motleyhealth.com/blog/indian-army-replace-military-drills

Our "Wounded Warriors" by Karla Stover

     The official Wounded Warriors Project registered for organization on February 23, 2005. The project I participate in isn't quite that old.

     Not many people know that National Garden Clubs are actively involved in community services. When I joined Root and Bloom Garden Club in January 2008, the members were looking for a community project and I suggested doing something for the residents at the Washington Soldier's Home and Colony, locally known as the Orting Soldier's Home because of its location on the edge of Orting in the Puyallup Valley. Using club money, a donation from the Mary Ball Chapter of DAR, and a grant from the Tacoma Garden Club, we planted over 400 daffodil bulbs. This led to a residents' garden club. Throughout spring and summer, we help those interested plant vegetable gardens in planter boxes raised to accommodate wheelchairs, and provide the plants and seeds they request. When the produce is ready for harvest, we have a feed. And at Christmas we buy the club members gifts. My husband and I delivered them yesterday.

     I learned, yesterday, that the last surviving WWI resident died recently but that there are still quite a few men and a few women (who have a Red Hat Club in the home) from WWII. I would love to record their war experiences and create a book but it's been my experience that soldiers don't like to talk about the war.

     However, getting back to their Christmas Wish Lists--so poignant. The government has cut back on many of their services (one reason they love the daffodils in bloom) and they want such basic things as shampoo, laundry detergent, and stick deodorant. Almost every list included Irish Spring soap and many also wanted V8 juice and sugar free chocolate. There were requests for handkerchiefs, Kleenex, and small boxes of apple juice. Usually we buy the items using some of our treasury money but this year the ladies took names, bought all the items requested and put them in Christmas bags.

     We can't all make monthly monetary donations as their ad requests but most of us can do little things to show our Wounded Warriors that we haven't forgotten them and that we care.

 

 

 

IS SOMEONE WATCHING OVER YOU?

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We’ve all had those feelings, the sensation of someone watching over us, protecting us, maybe even guiding us. We’ve all stopped a little early at a traffic light to magically miss a crazy driver speeding though a red light. We’ve all gotten those mystical reminders to make a phone call, check the cookies in the oven, or pay just a little more attention to what another person is saying. Take an umbrella. Have that mole looked at. Buy that stock. In most cases, these thoughts were not in our heads one minute, then blazing bright as a neon light the next. Just how are we thinking of these things?

Our brains are amazing machines, constantly multitasking and seeing or recognizing things long before our consciousness is aware. This is such a cool concept, but the brain can not, and may never, be fully explained. That makes it kind of a magical organ, functioning right there in our own head. It runs the heart, the senses, the creative, and our personal perception of reality. If that’s not magic, I can’t imagine what is.

Even with the brain’s astounding ability do so many things; I’m always curious about those particular questions above. Why did we take a different route to work, avoiding a tragic ten car pile up? What made us think to call an old friend just when that person needed to hear a friendly voice? Perhaps the brain can see into the future and lead us to these decisions, or perhaps it’s something else altogether. Perhaps it’s a guardian angel.

Angels have been part of the human experience since humans became human. Some ancient aboriginal cultures called them spirits. Some called them teachers or guides. Almost all the old religions have stories of angels, winged creatures of kindness, or judgment, or even wrath. A few claim that dead relatives are their personal angels. How many times has something occurred that made you smile and open your wallet because, “Dad’s telling me to buy a lottery ticket.” Look around. People you know may even seek guidance from angels through angel card readers and mediums.

The 21^st century is loaded with technology but still filled with people seeking a guardian angel to assist in everyday dealings, or help them through terrible events. I bet there’s even an app for our cell phones all primed to interaction with your personal guardian angel. It’s a sad imagining, with the likes of the Archangel Makha’el wearing Coke-bottle thick glasses, torn jeans, and an I Heart Guidance tee shirt, leaning in at a computer screen to develop the perfect app.

Personally, I think there is an angel in everyone’s life, sitting at our shoulder and watching over us. Have you met yours? How has your angel helped you lately?