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l yoga is an ancient and biological tool intimately linked to consciousness. Some voices claim that yoga is between 3,500 and 10,000 years old, and it is speculated that it arrived in the West coinciding with groups of people fleeing cities and machines to take refuge in the purity of forests, mountains, and the sea. Hinduism, on the contrary, argues that yoga has no age because it has always existed. They say it is the science of the soul, that the soul is one for all humanity, and that is why, when we awaken the yoga within us, we also awaken consciousness. But what does it mean that yoga awakens consciousness? And how can we affirm that yoga is a biological reality?
For some time now, Western medicine has been accepting the evidence and beginning to assume the ancestral weight of Eastern medicine. The clearest case, apart from small concessions to traditional Chinese medicine or Ayurveda, is yoga. For example, the belief that the routine practice of yoga helps to command the mind and, therefore, promotes control over one's own life, gathers a certain consensus. And there are also more and more professionals who prescribe the practice of yoga for certain cases of depression or mental disorder.
Yoga creates space in the muscular and bone structure and transforms stiffness, derived from accumulated tension, into well-being. And it also creates space in the mind to combat collapse when we are subjected to atrocious, unstoppable, and often cyclic and destructive thought.The practice of yoga converges on a single purpose; to create space: an action very present in our daily lives. When we are in prolonged states of anguish or stress, when we are in the middle of a crowd, or when we feel work pressure, we need space. And we also need it when we are influenced by stridency or toxic relationships. Faced with these situations that generate tension, the natural response we take as people is the action of moving away. And while from the external world we create space from the very action of physical distancing, a good way to distance ourselves from the inner world is through yoga.
Yoga creates space in the muscular and bone structure and transforms stiffness, derived from accumulated tension, into well-being. And it also creates space in the mind to combat collapse when we are subjected to atrocious, unstoppable, and often cyclical and destructive thoughts.
Surinder Singh (Rishikesh, India), probably the most prominent yoga master of the moment, uses an allegory that sheds light on this idea. Surinder says that people are like the soil that surrounds a seed. If the soil is a tight, stiff mass, the water runs off the edges and does not water the seed. On the contrary, through compact but not tight soil, water drains and waters the seed that will eventually bear fruit. If we project this allegory to our daily lives, the soil represents the body and mind, the seed represents the reason for existence – Dharma –, and water represents prana, energy. And not because it has metaphysical connotations, on the contrary; energy means molecules, electrochemical energy, electromagnetic energy, neurotransmitters, which in turn means blood, lymph... And the channels through which this energy flows are blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, meridians – typical of traditional Chinese medicine –, etc.
It happens that the Western lifestyle places extraordinary attention on external hygiene, but on the other hand, it pays little attention to internal hygiene and, consequently, the energetic channels are subject to worrying neglect. Factors such as pollution, diet, and behaviors that favor stress have a direct impact, and damaged energetic channels cause prana to flow as if moving through paths of weeds and thorns. Contributing to the cleaning and maintenance of the energetic channels is fundamental for a full, joyful, and optimistic life, and yoga contributes definitively, because with stretching and movement we create space in the body, and through connection with stillness we create it in the mind.
We create the space through which the prana flows, irrigating the reason for our existence, the prana that reaches every corner of the body, regularly, through each breath. Conscious breaths, less frequent each time, deeper each time. In this way, we lower blood pressure and, incidentally, block the messengers that transmit stress and anguish. And automatically, by a principle of proportionality, we activate the messengers over which the brain has no dominion: those that act on the heartbeat, the lungs, or the secretion of glands that, positively, endow us with physical and mental strength. The strength that, at the same time, gives us self-confidence. The confidence that contributes to the creativity necessary to face, with determination, life's challenges.