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YOGA FOR WELL BEING

Dr. Himani Shokhand

Consultant Yoga Therapist

Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga

Delhi

Yoga for well being is generally understood for health promotion through Yoga. Yoga is one of the ancient approaches that prevents your physical and mental illness as well as promote your health and life energy. Our life has become competitive and stressful in the name of progress. Our personality becomes lopsided in place of complete and balanced. This unbalanced development is the main cause of man’s distress and illness. For wellness we have to maintain balance among various aspects of life like physical, mental, social and spiritual. Unless the human personality develops in all aspects, we can’t get rid of distress and acquire all round health.

Yoga gives an integrated personality development with spiritual growth. Yoga way of life is characterized by peace and tranquility, harmony and health, love and happiness, precision and efficiency. Yoga is a science which develops the human personality by affecting all aspects of his existence and provides him complete health, prosperity, happiness and peace. Yoga offers man a conscious process to solve the menacing problems of unhappiness, restlessness, emotional upset, hyperactivity, etc in the society and helps to evoke the hidden potentialities of man in a systematic and scientific way by which man becomes a well developed individual. All facilities, physical, mental, intellectual and emotional- develops in a harmonious and integrated fashion to meet the challenges of life. The specialty of Yoga processes is that, the faculties get sharpened in tune with spiritual progress of man.

According to the traditional of Yoga and Upanishads , man has five bodies or koshas (sheath). The first and grossest is the physical body (Annamaya Kosha) in which illness shows up as structural and functional abnormalities leading to physical symptoms and signs. The next subtler body is the life energy body ( Pranamaya Kosha). This is the organized system (consisting of the network of meridians and nadis) of life force (prana-the bio-energy that differentiates a live cell from a dead cell) that makes all cellular functions possible. This probably presents as different layers of aura around our body, that can be perceived by a sensitized hand (prana healers , touch healers) recorded by Aura (Kirlian) photography. The psychical body (Manomayakosha) is responsible for the functions of mind , namely perception, analysis, memory and the emotions. The knowledge body (Vijanamaya kosha) characterized by a capacity to judge and discriminate, is aimed at channelizing human behaviour towards perfect health , in tune with nature. In the bliss body (Ananadamaya kosha) , man is established in perfect harmony and balance of all his faculties featured by total mastery , bliss and total freedom. Ashthang Yoga comprises of eight limbs of Yoga - Yama (Abstinences), Niyama (Observances), Asana (Posture), Pranayama (Breathing), Pratyahara (Withdrawal), Dharana (Concentration) and Dhyana (Meditation) and Samadhi (Absorption). Adoption of a Yogic lifestyle with proper nourishing diet, creates positive antioxidant enhancement thus neutralizing free radicals while enabling a rejuvenate storehouse of nutrients packed with life energy to work on anabolic, recuperative and healing process. Yoga works towards restoration of normalcy in all systems of the human body with special emphasis on the psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine-axis. In addition to its preventive and restorative capabilities. Yoga also aims at promoting positive health that will help us to tide over health challenges that occur during our lifetime. The concept of positive health is one of the unique contributions of Yoga to modern health care and it is a perfect discipline for wellness.