POWER OF YOGA

Today's world is full of stress and tension. This takes a toll on one's mental and physical health. Slowly, people have come to understand the benefits and cure those results from yoga. This has not yet become a chain reaction considering most of us are lazy to pick up a healthy habit. Yoga has branched off into many directions or cults. Nowadays doing yoga can be a fashion of sorts or it can even be a pastime that one picks up and slowly promotes its benefits to others.

If you look at the current followers of yoga, everyone does it from the celebrity stars to the sports stars and the persons in the judiciary. One thing common in all of these is the will to perform and for that sustenance of effort, yoga helps them. It is no wonder that even though it could boast of thousands of years of existence, it is still a minority considering its followers that flock to it, which is if you consider it as a religion of health.

A path to enlightenment that winds back 5000 years in its existence in native India, yoga has suddenly become a hot commodity that people pick up as a novelty and discard as it is a practice with no tools or site preparation or cost involved.

It’s the radiant bliss and the glow on the person who practices it and the flexibility and the wide variety of options in the asana that gets one and all attracted. Even though it is native to India, a lot of people in the western nations have studied and explored its richness and thereby yoga has found a lot of followers in those countries.

Yoga is found to be a remedy to cure a lot of diseases though research is going on to find its effectiveness in curing certain hard to cure diseases. The modern generation is beset with all sorts of stress right from childhood. No wonder schools have inculcated teaching yoga in schools right from primary grades.

Actually speaking, yoga has to become a part of our life as food is to the body. It has the power to heal us mentally and physically. The irritation, the frustration and the complexities associated with today's fast paced life that gets absorbed and eats into our physical and mental fabric is thrown out as a toxic from our bodies through yoga.

It changes the personality in you, gives courage to your character and builds on the confidence in you. Concentration in studies and a positive approach to life is the merits of yoga. It brings a positive aura around us. It brings inner peace and when our mind is peaceful we make the people around us also happy. Practicing yoga helps to accumulate positive energy which then flows from within and surrounds us.

The suicide cases among students after examinations are increasing due to the stress and pressure they are having from the outside world. No one is there to give them the medicine of relaxation. One can call yoga as the greatest stress buster in our busy and stressful life.

The change in the life style, the eating habits and the fast life has brought a lot of stress into children and adults living in cities. The parents, the teachers and the society should value the power of yoga which can bring into our new generation, a source of inner peace which will transform every individual into a strong and positive human being.

Meditation in yoga brings down your temper which will improve your health. Being angry with someone hurts you more than the opposite party. Inner engineering programs in yoga teach mind control and do not allow your emotions to control you.

Thousands of research studies have shown that in the practice of yoga a person can learn to control such physiologic parameters as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory function, metabolic rate, skin resistance, brain waves and body temperature, among other body functions. Illnesses such as obesity that is so widely rampant in boys and girls can be controlled using yoga. The costly weight management techniques employed by fitness clinics can thus be avoided along with the medical pills that come with it.

The biggest problem in practicing yoga is procrastination and the urge to do something different. Yoga requires a bit of patience for one to practice it regularly, but with it comes a lot of patience and wisdom to handle problems affecting one's health and society as a whole.

The advice to the young generation is to pick up this as a hobby, develop it as a habit and remain addicted to it. This would help all of us to stay away from other unwanted degenerating hobbies that take a toll of our health and lives.

                                                                                                                                  Ms.Beena Kollara

                                                                                                                            

Nostalgic memories ...Handling Finance......

Talking of price rise and what a rupee or for that matter a 10 rupee note can buy today ..maybe a Maha Munch... I thought of devoting some of my spare time to rekindle old memories of my school days during the 80's in Bombay (now Mumbai).

Pocket money coined in those years more as coin money was a welcome gift from our parents and the most we could get during those days was a 20p or a 10p on a daily basis. I was not in a habit of spending those coins on a daily basis though. It might so happen that there could be dry days in between.

A 10 p or 5 paise used to put our young minds in a dilemma as to what item could be purchased. There was always the local small grocer, who had all the stuff, right from 1p so as to say, you could fulfill the senses of your sweet tooth five times over. But that was too meagre.

The local grocer had pappadis, nuts, groundnuts, loose biscuits of ParleG, Chikkis, Ravalgoan sweets and what nots. On the way to school and around the school, especially during recess time, there used to come, a few hawkers who could understand our weakness on sweets, especially the chikkis and cotton candy, the sugar balloons that we used to call them during those time. The chikkiwala had a chisel with him which was used to chisel out portions of chikki from his large circular plate, which he used to keep on his bamboo stand, away from our prying hands if not from our eyes. I thought during those times the chikki was costlier than gold, the way he used to hand it over to us for our 5p or 10p that was doled out to him in return.

The process of making the cotton candies was enchanting for us, as the hawker used to practically reserve the preparation in front of our eyes, so that most of us would come out and stand around him than go across to any other optional hawker who offered his services to us on that day.

By the time, we chewed on the chikki and enjoyed the saliva mix with the goodness of jaggery, the bell would go off, thus signalling the end of recess time. It was, when we came to the secondary school, that the ice cream or the gola (crushed ice) maker was made accessible to us. He along with another maker was always positioned on the road adjoining the municipal school, which was on the way to our school. There were other hawkers on the street selling all sorts of condiments, (jamuns, green berries which we used to train our eyes to wink) but the moment our eyes caught sight of these 2 persons, all the rest would fade into darkness. They had this excellent assortment of colours to lace the golas. The grating and the formation of the gola was yet another process that would entertain our eyes. These people whether they be the golawala, the sweet candy maker, all were magicians in those heydays for us.

A treat to my classmates, especially the close friends circle, used to be a gola and for that I used to save my daily allowance. Apart from the gola makers, there were kulfi wallahs who used to make their appearance once in a while, and we used to grab the opportunity.

In contrast to the yester years, we are witnessing a sea change in the school and college canteens of today. What was denominated in paise has got translated into rupees, and even that has become scarce change for the community. Agreed; prices are not what they were three decades ago, but the dependency on canteen items for breakfast and lunch have increased. This can also be attributed to the modern parents who are working both ends to meet the rising expenses.  In most of the homes, the good healthy food made for breakfast or as Tiffin is missing. This forces them to turn to whatever the canteen provides. Also not all can afford the restaurants that are close by to the school or college premises, as the pocket money falls way short of what actually is needed. It is more of a funding that the kids of today receive that is not enough to serve any of the purposes for which it is handed out...

I thought; the basis of pocket money handed over to us as kids was to learn and keep a control of finances that came to us. It was meant to be a learning curve for handling, procuring things, managing and thereby saving money. It also would serve other purposes like understanding the cost of goods; their market prices and thereby appreciates the worth of money that was in our hands. As they say, money saved is money gained. Before buying an item, we need to think twice on whether it is really essential for us. Each of these needs have to be validated and vetted before the purchase can be made. This skill would come in handy and help us when we step in to older shoes.  Sadly the scene has changed and the basic purpose for which the pocket money was initiated has been lost.  But I am sure; today with a little effort from each one of us – the kids, parents and the society; the term pocket money could hope to regain its past glory.

I am thankful to my younger brother Sunith for sharing his school days’ memories with me while writing this article. 

 Beena Kollara