Healthy living

Healthy living

The number of yoga practitioners across the world is rising because people are discovering the multiple benefits of asanas. Yoga increases flexibility, helps in weight loss, improves cardio health and so on. And if you can learn it from the masters, nothing like it. Paramaguru R Sharath Jois, a world renowned Ashtanga Yoga expert, will be hosting his first ever workshop in Mumbai, hosted by True Bay India, from June 13-16.

Raised by generations of yogis, Jois is the grandson of Sri K Pattabhi Jois, who developed and popularised the vinyasa style of yoga, referred to as Ashtanga Yoga. Jois (known as Sharathji) carries on the lineage by teaching yoga students at his institute in Mysore and on his world tours every year.

Ahead of his workshop in Mumbai, we chat him up to find out more about the form and why learning yoga from a traditional guru is important.  

Jois explains that Ashtanga Yoga relies on the linking of yoga postures through prescribed movements and incorporates deep, even breathing (Ujjayi Breath) and steady gazing (Drishti). He adds that the three things of steady gazing in specific points (tip of nose, navel, thumb, hand etc) during each movement, body posture/asana in combination with breath called Tristana method is an important element of the practice.  

“Ashtanga Yoga is a different method as compared to other forms of yoga as we follow certain body postures coupled with breathing techniques which help the purification of the nervous system and the organs, and therefore the body and mind functions properly,” he says. 

Talking about how people these days have started practising yoga on their own, he says, “Practising yoga on your own is not a bad thing nevertheless it is actually important to go and practise with a teacher.” Jois believes that to practise yoga one needs proper guidance. “Yoga is a journey and one needs a good teacher to guide you through the entire process – from postures to the way of living called Yamas and Niyamas as described in Patanjalis’s Yoga Sutras. Ashtanga means eight limbs and asana is one of the eight limbs, the other limbs are equally important. One can definitely practise on their own when they have reached a certain level and have garnered a proper understanding and knowledge of yoga,” he says.

When one starts yoga it is important to have a teacher to guide you, and having a good student-teacher connection is important. 

He believes that since specialised Ashtanga Yoga teachers have already been on the same journey they know what it is like and have experienced it up close. Be it emotional ups and downs, injuries or handling life’s struggles —  they can be of great help to deal with such challenges that are part of today’s stressful life. 

To be happy and satisfied, both the body and mind have to be stable. Here, Ashtanga Yoga can be of great help because it works on the body and mind and raises one’s spiritual consciousness.

In earlier times, yoga was always practised with the help and guidance of a teacher, but in recent years, yoga, like many other forms of exercise, has made its way to digital platforms. The traditional guru, however, mentions that going digital can help spread greater awareness of the benefits of yoga, but it has its own challenges. For instance, you don’t have the advantage of practising yoga under the supervision of a  trained teacher. 

Jois says that yoga is not just about building your body and twisting it into shapes but to also understand what yoga is (on and off the mat) which can be done only when a teacher is monitoring you — right from the breathing techniques, to the right postures. However, on a digital platform there is no one to monitor and correct you.

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