On 19 October 1989, there was an event, which enthusiasts of yoga had been waiting in the USSR for many years. The first All-Union theoretical and practical conference «Yoga: problems of the health improvement and self-perfection of the person» was opened in one of the conference halls of Moscow State University’s skyscraper. There were present over 600 delegates from all union republics. Among a lot of big wigs in the presidium, only two persons Vasily Vasiljevich Brodov, professor of philosophy, and Mr. Ganguli, the first secretary of the Embassy of India in the USSR, had a direct attitude to development of yoga in the USSR. This conference lasted three days and was covered by mass media, though sparingly.
Among foreign visitors, there was B.K.S. Iyengar, who was distinguished between them by his majestic look. He arrived in Moscow with his secretaries and devoted pupils Dharmaversingh(Маhida) and Faek Biria.
Exclusively enthusiasts represented the Soviet participants as the official interdiction on yoga had been removed only half-year ago. Nevertheless, it was not known by whom, but in Moscow was created at full speed a Research-and-Production Center of nonconventional methods of health improvement at the Central Research Institute of Medicine and Sports of Goskomsport (State Committee for Sports) where yoga, experts on which simply could not exist, appeared magically in the spectrum of paid services.
It turned out so that after the conference Iyengarvisited me at my place. When I showed him a powerful folio in a self-made scarlet binding having explained it was a translation of his book on which we studied yoga during vague times of interdiction on yoga in the USSR, he was so astonished that asked me to present him this book for the museum of Ramamani Iyengar Institute in Poona. Those who were there, speak that the big red book takes till now one of the honorary places in the exposition and then, in 1989, Gurujihas inscribed the book for me on the cover of an English edition of his «Light on yoga»: «I wish you to create your own Ashram».
Two years later, in 1991, Lakshman Kumar’s eight Russian pupils (the first teacher of yoga at the Indian embassy) among which the author of these lines was too, had received teaching certificates at the presence of the ambassador of India of those times Gonsalves. And soon the foolhardiest ones (Roman Amelin, Boris Martynov, Konstantin Danilchenko, and the author of these lines) have founded the first in Russia «Classical yoga Center».
I am asked until now: whence is such interest to the Indian exotic? Why not to develop something one’s own, age-old, Russian?
Let us start with the fact that yoga is a universal method of self-improvement checked up by time, which, except for other, provides to its adepts a steady physical health.
But what is the health? It is a state, which becomes appreciable only at its infringement while everything is all right the mechanisms of vital functions do not become apparent.
The modern medicine is aimed at a conservative (therapy) or an operative (surgery) elimination of diseases. But to keep the health, to warn its disturbance, to help to restore it after operations and traumas are the problems which are beyond the bounds of the official medical competence.
Avicenna had told once (meaning a usual physical activity as he was hardly familiar with yoga): «The movement will replace all medicines of the world, but no medicine of the world will replace the movement». Yoga expands the area of this statement using special opportunities.
So the health is influenced by a whole set of following major factors:
— Heredity;
— Ecology;
— Society;
— Food, water, air;
— Personal behaviour.
The first factor is unremovable, one can only adapt to it. Taking account of the second one is a prerogative of the state; today the country as never requires the rigid ecological control though a great deal depends on the population too. The third factor is defined by the level of cultural and economic development of the country and personal qualities of the individual. The influence of the fourth factor is determined by the material well-being. And the fifth is a deciding one as «The activity of the person has so changed environment that he must change himself in order to survive in it» (N. Wiener).
Today, as never, the person needs a simple and a reliable way of self-preservation, a universal adapter to the ecology degrading like a shot. In the industrialized countries the high level of comfort, on the one hand, the congestion of population and the growth of information pressure, on the other hand, have led to that the overwhelming part of the overloads which fall to the subject’s lot is located in his psychoemotional sphere. The body does not actually participate in their utilization, being immobilized and out-of-training. As consequence, the number of individuals with psychological pathologies, addicts, alcoholics, and cases of deviating behaviour increases quickly. Application of antibiotics generates the bacterial resistance, there are mutations with which the immune system of the person is not capable to manage, and there arise diseases and frustrations, unknown to the persons earlier.
What is offered for the salvation of the problem?
First, sports both traditional and more and more extreme. There was an innumerable set of methods, schools and systems of health improvement, but for the most part, people take their health carelessly as usually. Doctors themselves are almost first of all subject to typical weaknesses and defects. The health is given to everyone from birth, its reserve is final, but while it is possible, the person behaves so, as if he is immortal.
Gladiators from sports fight on rings, stadiums, routes, and courts, and crowds of the fatty idlers rage at telescreens and at stadiums. Atherosclerosis, cardiovascular and neuropsychic diseases become swiftly younger, and if the situation will develop in the same direction, so the treatment will soon begin from birth and last till one’s dying day. As if the average life grows, but its quality, already from the youth, is in increasing frequency defined by the idea «more dead than alive». As to Russia, Michael Zadornov precisely characterized the situation in it: «The Russian lives little, but bad».
Nobody objects to the healthy way of life, but the overwhelming majority of people consider that it is connected with restriction of their personal freedom, which gives the right to do with themselves everything whatever they like.
The conference on the site realyoga.ru of 06.2003, Lana:
«I met private medical practitioners from quite traditional directions of medicine who positively relate to yoga, but all of them say: a rare patient is ready to accept responsibility for his health. One of the reasons of such state of affairs is called the Soviet medical official organ which alongside with ideology, had brought up the similar attitude of citizens».
It is difficult to agree with it as not all in the USSR was so poorly, as with sports, and, for example, with education. Personally, I would not blame only physicians. In 1924, vodka forbidden since 1914 had returned on the shop shelves. Bolsheviks had simultaneously declared the physical development of «the new person» as one of the problems of improvement of masses. The term itself «physical training» had been introduced into practice by N. Semashko, people’s commissar of public health and in every possible way supported by N. Podvoysky, the head of the Universal military training. The state needed the citizens devoted to ideas of communism, serving selflessly the higher-ups, alien to the petty-bourgeois aspiration to the material welfare, and which were pictures of health. However, the average proletarian when he was not touched, was quite pleased with availability of vodka, low-grade tobacco, and cards, and did not recollect about his health at all. The same way of life has smoothly moved to the Brezhnevian epoch. In the Soviet society, drinking session was a means of identification of the person with the environment, means of recognition by colleagues and comrades. All my friends in the youth began enough early and regularly to consume alcohol, at the same time we normally studied, were fond of speleology, rock-climbing, spent much time on the sea – what a remarkable life was then in the Crimea! My persistent attempts of the evasion from «national tradition» were perceived with disappointment. I was explained very simply: first, we have freedom and if a person wishes to drink that concerns nobody. Second, if you are a normal man then not to knock back for friendship and health it is a direct disrespect and a challenge! Third, each sensible person knows his norm. Fourthly, are you, son-of-a-bitch, the cleverest and do you want to live longer than all others?! I, a renegade, was at first indulgently and friendly tolerated, then one got used, and after the army one already gave praise to me as an exhibit: — Listen, and we — seriously! — have a boy, he is one of us through and through, but teetotal! No, he is not sick, simply does not drink, and that’s all, he is a yogin, can you imagine?!
More than forty years have passed since then. Many of those who «knew his norm», became drunkards and died, the rest is long ago in no mood to laugh, but they cannot refuse alcoholic drinks (for today, only one succeeded in it!). Now it is impossible with friends, those who are still alive, to run, as in the youth, on the Chatyr-Dag or Mangup (Crimean mountains), they have no health in order, as at the age of twenty, to dive, sunbathe, swim; there is only one side of the far former freedom accessible — to carry a glass up to the mouth.
Hans Selje has told once: «One must live not less intensively, but more reasonable». Today the life of a cultural person should by all means includepersonal efforts on preservation of health, irrespectively of race, nation and age. In megapolises one of the most favorable and effective ways for this purpose is Hatha-Yoga. We touchingly care of pets, flowers, the automobile, but not many people come to the idea, until they get hurt with hard times, that own body is a unique machine demanding daily attention and preventive measures.
Life, death, and health have no precise definitions, though there are some indirect ones, for example, health is the absence of an illness. The absolute health is incompatible with the life; it would mean an invariance of processes of life-support at time.
«A certain intermediate mode between chaos and order is characteristic for normal functioning practically of all systems of vital activity. Breath, heart beat, blood formation, rhythms of sleep and wakefulness, mental balance — for all these processes, the certain measure of chaos is necessary for maintenance of health. The health is a thin balance between chaos and order. The question consists in how much chaos can bear a human body in order not to be ill?» («Foundations of Synergetics», p. 344).
«The health represents an optimum ratio of interconnected rhythms of physiological functions of an organism and their correspondence with cyclic changes of the environment» (Hildebrand, 1976).
«The health grows out of the dynamic balance between physical, psychological, and social aspects of existence» («Dao of physics», 1994).
To the concept of «health» a steady constancy of the internal environment of the organism answers, and it called in physiology homeostasis (it keeps in mind not a pathological homeostasis, peculiar to chronic patients, but that, which is characteristic for the person who does not have obvious diseases).
The health is a subjective experience of well-being arising at functioning of the organism in a definite manner; the problem is how to describe the given condition. Until a certain time the body uncomplainingly endures any treatment, similarly a courtier who was whipped once on cheeks by His Serene Highness Potyomkin, who repeated at that: «What is to do with them, if they endure everything!»
In the attitude to the health, there are frequently two extreme approaches: superegoism (when the person spits at everything, caring only about his good self) and a senseless self-sacrificingness. In the latter case, one member of the family selflessly cares for others, more often for children, preserving them from the slightest difficulties. Children are regretted in advance: let them grow, poor things, they will sweat yet. In this case, the «devotee» has no time and opportunity to keep his health though he spends it with a mad intensity, similarly to Pavka Korchagin, one of the heroes of the Soviet epoch: «Guys, there will not be a shift for us, but we are here… ». When for infinite household chores there are only «we» in one person then the following in due course results from this:
— The pathologically careful member of the family wears out prematurely in all senses;
— Thus, he reduces his life, consequently and the duration of his care of people for the sake of which he is so spoiled in daily routine;
— Children get used, as well as their parent protecting them excessively to concern their health carelessly, besides they grow as double-dyed egoists, getting used to that all people always owe them;
— They cannot normally adapt to the life because the pathological trusteeship deprives them of their opportunity to show the responsibility since their childhood;
— When (sooner or later) the health of the caring one comes to the end, so he becomes a burden to the offspring brought up in this way.
The resume: Meaning the personal health, one should remember that the interests of each separate person are always a part of interests of his milieu. The governments cannot effectively care of the health of their citizens, and consequently, everyone should observe himself and give to that exactly so much time, how much is necessary to keep his psychophysical adequacy, not turning into a victim of comfort, empty desires, and bad habits. Even if the initial qualities are remarkable, any organism in due course falls into decay as it inevitably wears out during the life. It was perfectly said about it by François Villon: «Where is the shoulders’ atlas? Where is the lips’s balm? Where are languishing eyes attracting so? Where is the body honouredas a temple where one comes from far away?»
Conservation of a good level of the health despite of age demands a regular investment of forces and time. Let us consider benefits, which yoga can give here:
— It disappears the necessity for sportive apparatuses and simulators, with the help of which the work is carried out, the own body is at disposal of everyone;
-There are no losses of time for transport; one can practice at home;
-The necessary minimum of area makes up two square meters;
— There is a restoration not only of body, but also of psychoemotionalsphere;
-The method is verified by millennia and, as against a lot of modern ones, is safe.
Asanas is a unique kind of physical activity influencing purposefully internal organs by giving to the body unusual positions (forms). Any pose of yoga acts on the organism as a whole and locally — on separate parts, besides all its volume is exposed to a specific gravitational «processing» by blood mass. Asanasprovide an alternate rhythmical compression, a stretching, and a twisting of the body. Uddianaand Mula Bandhipromote the removal of stagnant blood from zones of a bad microcirculation facilitating venous outflow and «freshening» the blood circulation in corresponding sites of tissues and organs. The science does not know yet the mechanism of influence of asanasand Bandhion the blood circulation in arterioles, capillaries, and veins where the gas diffusion between tissues and the blood channel takes place.
According to its intensity, physical exercise is conditionally subdivided into four categories (by the way, well known in therapeutic physical training): a weak, a moderate, a strong, and a very strong one. The physiological effect of the first category passes without leaving a trace and quickly (though in case of a heavy chronic disease, it can be rather useful), the moderate one stimulates vital activity, the strong oneoppresses, a very strong — destroys. The traditional Hatha-Yoga is realized only in the field of moderate and weak burdens.
The economic freedom, which has replaced in Russia the epoch of the compulsory distribution, satisfying the overwhelming majority of population, has led to the universal neurotization without exception. Even young people sharply feel that the way of life dictated by the Russian business is unnatural. Habitual ways of removal of overburdens and stresses (vodka, bathhouse, and etcetera) are fraught with side effects; therefore, the more farseeing people try to keep themselves with other methods. Nevertheless, it does not always work.
The first episode: the guy of twenty eight years is healthy, physically advanced, his activity is commerce. After the working day, he constantly ran, engaged as far as possible in athleticism, training apparatus, swimming, and did not use alcoholic drinks. About three years everything was normal, then his physical condition began to take a turn for the worse, it appeared emotional breakdowns. Remembering that the best rest is the change of activity, he began to increase burden, but he was not feeling better. He came to me with a sallow complexion, edematous eyes, the general depression, a constant nervous pressure, bad sleep, irritability, chronic weariness, and tachycardia — and all that at a growth of meter ninety and a fine constitution!
During the working day, the level of his emotional excitation became stronger and by the evening, there came overheating. In such condition the guy loaded himself in the evenings with training apparatus, he ran, etc., but it did not help. Why? If an excited person lifts a weight, gets into the ice hole or runs with the same thoughts, which had strained him, physical burden will not remove his nervous stress, but only strengthen it! Once there wasInstitute of physical training at Goskomsport, an unprecedented sinecurefor idlers. During long years in its walls, the sole efficient thesis had been defended there whose author had shown that in pre- and postcontest periods sportsmen suffer from overburdening immunodeficiency.
The same takes place at long stresses as in the case with my patient. He burdened honestly himself, not having reset the general nervous overexcitation to the necessary level (everyone has his own), and consequently the active physical work did not remove this overexcitation, but only strengthened it! Only with the beginning of mastering a deep relaxation by means of yoga, the person began to come to the senses and then was completely restored.
The second episode: a carpenter from Nefteyugansk, twenty-three years, a severe asthenia, since his childhood a severe neurotic, at the age of five, he saw, how his drunken father had split mother’s skull. Since then the guy is having stutter, sleeplessness, depression, general morbidity, bad contacts with his peers. He tried to strengthen the health — run, dumbbells, swimming, system of Porfirij Ivanov, but in a short time, he invariable fell ill. In 1992, the carpenter had arrived to a seminar in Aksakovo, but soon it became clear that asanas do not suit, the guy did not know at all what the relaxation is. I advised him to carry out Yoga Nidra twice a day; one year later, he had called me and told: You know, now I began at last to live …
The third episode: a computer specialist of fifty-five years, he had such a physical form that one cannot trust in his eyes. Seraphim, that was his name, had taken the great interest in mountaineering from his youth up and had visited all the seven-thousandths of the Soviet Union. Earlier, I had not happened to communicate with people of such turn of mind, and I could not take in sense what this gray-haired man with the body of a thirty-year one wanted from me? Then he explained that there are no censures on health as though, however his endurance is not such as earlier, that his backbone having been influenced by tons of a cargo, lifted for many years in climbing camps does not allow him to lug rucksacks up to the mountains.
On the one hand, had said Sima, I would like to investigate my back, on the other hand, the body needs some equivalent, one does not let me upward, I have anyway surpassed already all my schoolfellows…
— Well, I said, — but why yoga? In fact, there are many occupations that are more accessible: mountain skiing, for example, does it have not enough burdens and a thrilling experience?
The swarthy face of the climber has expressed skepticism: — But I had tried, you rush along this hill, the speed is over one hundred — and what? It does not go dark before your eyes, the breath is normal, there are no hints that you are at the breaking point — debauchery! And yoga is said to treat the back well … Simagrasped explanations in passing, but he strained in asanas so, as if he dragged bags with salt. Not feeling necessity of a relaxation, he showed unprecedented rigidity in relation to his body which was rescued from traumas only by his faultless physical form. Anyway, within year and a half, the climber had mastered the deep relaxation, and the problem with the back had been removed.
F. Kapra («Dao of physics», 1994) had investigated a lot of cultures and traditions trying to define fundamental parameters of health and came to the conclusion that there are only two of them: the flexibility of the backbone and the skill deeply to relax, both these qualities are provided by yoga.
Let’s consider the idea of homeostasis, a steady constancy of the internal environment of the organism being one of the attributes of health. One can conditionally allocate three characteristic versions of the homeostasis, the first — when physiological parameters remain in allowable borders of the deviation, what the person would not do. In this case, the health is named «iron», historical examples are Gilyarovsky, Dumas (father), Grishka Rasputin.
The second is an one-time disorder; its reasons can be external, internal, or combined. In this case, the number of secondary parameters of homeostasis go out of the limits of optimum values, but protective forces of the organism become at once more active, correcting the situation.
The third variety are chronic diseases when the functional disbalance is kept long time, being redistributed in a network of subsystems. In this case, the illness is not capable to break the organism finally, and protective forces cannot handle it too, the homeostasis speaking figuratively stiffens in a «twisted» form.
Hatha-Yoga distinctlyaffects the work of immune system, not only stimulating (many modern medicines suffer from such disadvantage), but correcting softly its work. It allows yoga to be equally effective both at immunodeficiency and at autoimmune diseases. It is possible that the specific immunity is not affected at that, but by local changes of hemodynamicsand the stimulation of vegetative functions, it has a direct influence upon the nonspecific immunity.
Initial or therapeutic complexes of asanasshould be selected only individually, with regard for age, constitution, the state of health and kind of activity of the individual. In this case, the practice forms an optimum tone of the autonomic nervous system, ANS(a combination of excitation and inhibition, currents of Ida and Pingala).
The mental relaxation — a temporary inhibition of standard activity of cerebral cortex (at awake consciousness) — provides a more full integration of its processes with the subcortical ones that, in its turn, allows overcoming disorders of the tonic rhythm. As the body is a product of a long animal evolution, maybe asanas influence it as archetypes of early stages of phylogenesis and ontogenesis (development of a species and a separate specimen), utilizing partially the psychoemotional energy of instincts.
The circulatory system of the organism has a reserve of capacity – a system of so-called collaterals, the vessels that are being in an inactive, potential state. If necessary, this reserve can quickly (within several hours) be activated up to the capacity covering an increased need of the blood flow. Collaterals arevessels-substitutes, they deliver blood roundabout in those areas of the body where it cannot come in for any reasons under the usual pattern. The second component of the reserve are anastomoses, the secondary conductors of blood connecting among themselves the main vessels of the basic network. Anastomosesand collaterals form a protective mechanism of the circulatory system, a damper extinguishing peak situations in it.
The collateral network covers the whole tissue volume of the body, including the cardiac muscle; this reserve keeps the life not only at occlusions (clots of blood) and the destruction of the basic vessels, but also at atherosclerotic narrowing of their lumen. At chronic coronary diseases, the collateral reserve of the cardiac muscle is in due course completely exhausted. In comparison with the rate of development of pathological «chronic diseases», collaterals join in a preceding way, therefore the person can feel quite normally having the strongest atherosclerosis; in such condition even an insignificant overburden can provoke the sudden cardiac death.Defects of working vessels of heart are visible on the coronagraph, and «frozen» collaterals are not. Though the vascular reserve has a big functional capacity, in peak situations it frequently has not enough time for «inclusion». Without need (the nature is economical), collaterals are in the potential state and cannot come in a working state instantly. Researches have shown that the vascular reserve is mobilizedand is always ready to instant action only for those who live on the height from 1000 up to 2000 m above the sea level), goes regularly in for sports or physical work.
In asanas,large vessels are partly squeezed hard, and in separate parts of circulatory system, there is a local stagnation of blood, which is making the system of collaterals active. Therefore, real yogisalways can be recognized by bright color of their skin, an attribute of the full-fledged blood circulation.
At competent practicing asanas, even the most physically difficult ones, the pulse does not rise above eighty, but then what can make collaterals of myocardium active? Here Pranayama takes part in the game: a trained yogi can freely breath in rate one breath during three minutes and more, and consequently the respiratory process is slowed down thirty times less (in comparison with the state of rest), and the best sprinter exceeds speed of a usual walking only eight times more. The quantity of carbonic gas in the organism, at rate of breath one cycle every four minutes, is approximately six times more than by the sprinter who has run the distance. But the runner «works off» the distance approximately for ten seconds, and time of Pranayama practicing is much times more. Oversaturation of blood by carbonic gas causes expansion of vessels down to capillaries making collaterals of the cardiac muscle active. Thus, the traditional yoga usefully influences both on circulatory and endocrinal systems of the organism.
Now we will address to non-material, if it is possible to say so, consequences of regular and qualitative practicing yoga. Many problems are connected with that the current vital situation cannot be adequately perceived and appreciated, because the information, which is perceived and operated by the person, does not happen to be full (and cannot be such one). The reality is always wider than perception and any description of it, hence and understanding. Being a character of a painting, one cannot see the whole of it, for this purpose, it is necessary to leave its plane. The genuine sense of eventsalwaysclears up to the person only after they had been removed back in time. When the understanding comes, it is already impossible to do anything; from here is a saying «you’ve missed the boat». But the adept of yoga daily leaves the stream of life for another reality; due to this circumstance (regular practice), he receives a new point of the review; the principle of complementarityis thus realized, and the understanding of the current situation becomes adequate, without usual losses of time! «And there, above the sleepy street, hiding terrestrial features, as a wall, illuminated strangely, stands up my life behind me» (V. Nabokov). Thus, yoga gives a fantastic opportunity to bypass Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem.
The following moment is the communication of the person with «the rest of the mentality». Methods of Freud, Jung, Raich, etc. were created just to release the subconsciousness, a constant source of psychosomatic suffering, from the pathological material displaced and «settled» there. At a deep mental relaxation, this material starts gradually and unconsciously to annihilate through the «space» of consciousness. All displaced cannot be completely dumped through the body, how effective would not be the practice, deep mental problems, anyhow, «are pitted» against their partial comprehension. Jacobson and Schultz had worked in the same direction – with the corporal «channel» of unloading of subconsciousness – as far back as the beginning of the XX century (before creation of Yoga Nidra technics by Svami Satyananda Saraswati (SSS)). However, if Schultz had stopped on autodidactics, so Jacobson paid much attention to the study of physical «suppressions» taking into account their communication with the displaced emotions.
The following moment is, as I call them, «small siddhas». During asanas practicing(or in pauses between them), answers to not asked, but urgent questions begin to «shoot at» partly switched-off consciousness. The emerging information needs to be taken into consideration and account of; otherwise, the heuristic process will go out. For utilization of this phenomenon, one can have with oneself a paper and a pen, doing necessary marks without superfluous vanity in order not to break silence of mind by the effort of storing.
Any person, be he a Solomon, inevitably collides with troubles and problems. Reaction of yoga adepts to them differs from a usual one by absence of superfluous emotions and frenzy. It allows keeping an optimum state in the heaviest situations. Under usual conditions, yoga gives an unsurpassed clearness of the perception, the thinking, and the feeling of refined joy not depending on anything.
Last years middle-aged people and still young enough address often to me with an interesting problem: materially they are secured completely, as one says, «are packed completely», they have everything. They cannot only live. They have bats in their belfry because of the existential emptiness, are tormented by the boredom, the satiety, and the sensation of aimlessness of the life. I warn at once: yoga gives the excellent health and the mental harmony only to the social person who already has his business, his interest in this world, but it cannot provide the meaning of life — in this respect there should not be illusions! Yoga is a sense for professionals, but not for average people, for them it is only a means! The person should keep himself busy, it is desirable that he would like his business; absence of such affair (interest) comes to a nasty end for the soul and mind. Poincare said once: «The main thing is not earning money, but absence of boredom at that». The problem of search of the meaning of life is beyond the framework of yoga, thoughoccasionallyit happens so that the person who had come to his senses and recovered his health with its help finds his calling in horizon of his new perception of the world.
If problem of the meaning does not exist, then after unloading of subconsciousness there comes a stage of Samtoshi. The person stays now in an invariably positive mood, in a state of unmotivated, causeless happiness what is peculiar to us only in the childhood. Even after inevitable vital failures and accidents the psychoemotional state automatically, as cork-tumbler,comes back to the acceptable level of worries; the unbearableness is quickly over.
And now about work or business. If, being in the state of usual psychoemotional imbalance (peculiar to 99 % of the adult population of Russia), one works flat out to the limit of abilities and resources, participating in various events and processes, and providing their development desirable for themselves, then chances to settle the situation in the necessary key are always less than 100%. And those who had been completely worked by yoga can do a minimum of the necessary, however the result always turns out as the best of the possible ones. And it is an absolutely other life, unlike everything, what had been earlier.
Now about expenditures of time and age frameworks. As a rule, an adult person is satisfied with seven hours of sleeping though the individual dispersion of need for it is great enough. The qualitative yoga reduces the rest until five hours; there are no restrictions on practicing because of age. Yoga is recommended to children after five years, but with certain nuances. The texts advise to begin the practice in general either in the childhood, or at the mature age as from twenty till fifty years the lion’s share of energy of the individual is spent for the solution of social problems. However, such restriction is sufficiently conditional, and yoga can be successfully mastered at any age.
It is said in «Hatha Yoga Pradipika»: «Due to long practice the old yogilooks younger again». The Belgian queen started yoga practicing at age of eighty-four years, Krishnamurti- of sixty. Indra Devi carried out asanaswhen she was far over ninety, guru Krishnamacharya practiced until hundred years (true, his own yoga), B. K. S. Iyengarkeeps practice, having celebrated his ninetieth anniversary.
Actually, why cannot those live longer than middle-aged persons who regularly observe their health and peace of mind? In chronicles of the East Indian Company, there is a description of a curious incident. In the middle of the seventeenth century its agents cooperated in India with raja of one of the princedoms; the son and his successor, Tapasviji, practiced yoga from his youth up, he was born in the middle of the eighteenth century, but had died in the second half of the twentieth!
It is known, that a certain Jinyun, the personal doctor of the Chinese general Jang Seng Lee, practicing ch’i kung and the traditional Chinese medicine, had lived about two hundred fifty years. To tell the truth, Abkhazian Shirali Muslimov had reached the age of hundred sixty-seven years having no idea of ch’i kung and yoga; as well as Englishman Thomas Parr who had survived sixteen kings and at the age of his hundred fifty-five had died from the gluttony. It is clear that the leading role in longevity is played by the heredity, the way of life, and, certainly, the chance; yoga only completely realizes the potential incorporated by the nature.
Asanas and Pranayamas act on the body as the roasting on natural clay: the fire provides the maximal durability of the product, but surplus of the fire is equivalent to its absence. The Japanese have a riddle: what part of a traditional wooden house is the most durable? The answer is: The cant of a threshold, it freezes, becomes wet, one treads upon it constantly, it is absolutely in uncomfortable conditions, but it is kept much longer than the rest. «Yoga is an asinine work, but the result is magnificent!» (aphorism by B. К. S. Iyengar).
At the end of the XX century in California, a symposium on the longevity had taken place where it was found out that one of the reasons of the ageing and simultaneously its sign is a critical reduction of muscle bulk of the body resisting to gravity. The reason of such reduction is a decrease in production of the somatotropic hormone of hypophysis (STH), being responsible for including the prevalence of muscle bulk above the fatty one. A plenty of experiments with introduction of synthetic STH has shown its high efficiency in the treatment and preventive maintenance of ageing. Probably, the Hatha-yoga somehow starts the natural process of synthesis of STHby hypophysis and mediately– by other hormones as the results of its practice obviously correlate with normalization of function of the hormonal system. All this precisely goes into the neuroendocrinal theory of ageing developed by Dilman. Hatha-yoga supports the functioning of psychosomatics on the optimum level, as speed holds the motorcyclist on a vertical wall. If skillfully to throw a flat stone on the water smooth surface, it slides on it like «dotted line», now concerning the surface, now flying through the air. The moment the speed of the stone decreases (yoga practicing or any other active physical functioning is stopped) — it ceases to keep on the verge of two worlds and sinks.
They say that though the yogi lives in the world, but he does not belong to it entirely (does not submit to its laws, for example — to the average aging rate). Texts of nathasassert: «Saved from all illnesses, yogidevelops a flexible and soft body as an internal part of a lotus stalk and so enjoys the youth and longevity».
«No person treats so conscientiously and attentively his health as a true yogi staying in indissoluble communication with the most delicate physiological laws, serving as a sample of the perfect, absolute, and equilibrium health» (Sri Yogendra, «Personal hygiene of yogi», p. 17).
But the standard is a product of exclusive conditions; a clever person will never aspire to the full perfection, otherwise the situation on Chesterton is inevitable:
«Certainly, they consider that their belief treats all illnesses of the body. And does it treat a unique illness of spirit? — Father Brown asked seriously and excitedly.
— Oh, what illness is it, — smiled Flambeau.
— The confidence in own health, — answered the priest».
If something in the life is not so, after a qualitative practicing it becomes always easier. It is similar to baron Munchausen who pulled out himself by hair from the bog, but in the case with yoga, it is a simple truth. It gives an internal point of the support hidden in you which does not depend on anything external. Things are soulless, people are momentary, and all is too unreliable and fleeting. As the publican Levi Matthew has told about the Master: «He has not deserved light; he has deserved rest». (M.Bulgakov «Master and Margareth») Certainly, the rest is far from being a happiness, but its unconditional forerunner.
Yoga described in this book is not a way of the solution of extremely private problems, it is something much more — an element of the most effective behavioral strategy. Everybody can successfully use the given technology including believers (and the Orthodox ones too). The work with the body and breath does not contain ideas, it is impersonal as a scalpel of the surgeon saving the life.
Speaking about economically advanced countries, Jung has noted: «The spiritual development of the West went absolutely other ways than in the East that is why it has created, perhaps, the most adverse conditions for application of yoga» («Yoga and the West», p. 38). It is impossible to agree with this statement as no conditions interfere with people to master household appliances becoming more and more complicated, including the computer one. The technology of yoga is not more complex, other business is that there is a sharp deficiency of those who authentically master it.
It is told in «Dhammapada»: «If something should be made — do, make with hardness. Because the relaxed wanderer only lifts more dust» («Dhammapada», p. 112).