M A I L B A G

Yoga: The new lifestyle trend

APROPOS of Aradhika Sekhon’s article “Yoga GenNow’s Power Pill”, (Saturday Extra, June 12), the writer has rightly described yoga as a new lifestyle trend.

Today, we claim that we are modern and civilised but cannot claim that we are genuinely happy. Stress and strain is the cause of physical as well as psychological diseases such as diabetes, acidity, ulcer, migraine and hypertension. Yoga has remedies for man’s physical as well as psychological ailments. If a person practices yoga with devotion and concentration, he /she feels a union with the creator of the universe.

Yoga asanas give sufficient exercise to internal organs of the body. The body develops more resistance to keep diseases away. Asanas require the least possible physical energy, as a result, one feels less tired. Asanas stimulate different glands of the body. These stimulated glands produce secretions which having mixed with blood help the body to acquire a well-balanced growth.

VIPIN SEHGAL, Kurukshetra

II

Swami Ramdev has taken India by the storm. Thousands flock to him for synthesis of mind, body and spirit, to look great and feel young, or for natural cures to chronic diseases.

With all that, our attitude towards the Swamiji, yoga and Ayurveda, much like our attitude towards Vedic Astrology, remains reverential rather than rational. Swamiji is openly claiming that the yoga as taught by him can cure such diseases as diabetes, Parkinson’s diseases, coronary artery diseases etc. Why not allot to the Swamiji some willing patients suffering from such diseases at the PGI and AIIMS and monitor the cure scientifically? Even partial but authentic success will earn the Institute and the system a permanent place in the history of medicine. One factor that would need to be kept in mind is that shraddha is a necessary ingredient and only such patients should be selected as have faith in yoga.

Ramdev ashram also prescribes and dispenses Ayurvedic medicines for various ailments. Does that not attract the provisions of the Indian Medical Council Act? The Directorates of Public Health, Ayurvedacharyas included, are mysteriously silent on the subject.

But, does anyone up there have the time for all this? Or, will Ayurveda remain an unsettled controversy just as astrology has?

L.R. SHARMA, Solan

III

I would like to describe yoga as an effective tool for life management. It enables us to unite the individual soul with the ultimate eternal one. This union is the chief purpose of human life and in our endeavour to achieve this, we are faced with innumerable obstacles. But all hurdles are removed when the practitioner of yoga obtains the grace of God.

Pranayama (breathing exercises) has its rules too — it should be preceded by the sodhana (cleaning) of 72,000 nadis (nerve channels) on our body. Then the body becomes lighter and healthier, and the nasal passages are filled with a divine fragrance.

K.M. VASHISHT, New Delhi

Unfair to Keats

Apropos of “Keats’ ode to the Bard” by Darshan Singh Maini (Spectrum, June 13). It is a pity that the writer has not been able to see the wood for the trees.

Comparisons are always odious and fully uncalled for in the case of two disparate celebrities as Keats and Shakespeare. No doubt both of them dealt in the genre of literature. But still they were poles apart.

Shakespeare was basically a playwright who borrowed the themes of his works from Plutarch. Keats was an undiluted poet of beauty and love.

Why should have Keats tried to emulate Shakespeare? The young poet was a peerless genius in his own right. He might have admired the Bard of Avon, but was too titanic to take him as a role model.

CHAMAN LAL KORPAL, Amritsar