Depending
upon various understandings of the targets of yoga there exist a
number of various styles and methods of yoga practice. Here I would
like to give some explanations concerning my view of the initial
practice of the yoga that I call yoga
for life.
Those
who start practicing yoga should take into account the initial
condition of their organism that depends upon numerous factors, the
basic of them been: the medical condition, the sports habits, the
age, the body type. And it is not only the physical load on body but
also the proper consequence of the methods of working with this body
that should be correctly matched in consideration of these aspects.
So, here are a few words about these factors.
A
person having some serious diagnosis should start from therapeutic
yoga groups or, if the case is even worse, from the doctor-led
rehabilitation therapy. A competent yoga instructor knows the list of
diseases that can entail negative results if practicing in scope of a
standard group. I shall remind here that in defining the category of
health the World Health Organization considers not only physical,
psychical and moral well-being, but takes account of the social and
material as well. And in one’s preparation to yoga practice of
advanced level one should consider the situation in all of the said
aspects. The required basic level of the strong organism ready for
yoga practice assumes the availability of time, energetic and
material resources. In this case the person shall not be driven by
the desire to merely escape to yoga from his everyday problems.
In
our reference to sports habits we obviously mean the kinds of sport
that actively engage the whole of physical body. That is, the body
has been formed under the influence of the respective physical loads
and it’s as if been “sharpen” for them. Usually this is the
level of the 1st
sport category and higher. Even in case there were some athletic
injuries or occupational health problems in the sphere of sport the
sportsmen usually come as already rehabilitated persons, or at least
they know how to deal with it. As a rule, these people have a good
feeling of their body and in scope of matching the exercise load
their age limits can be increased by another few years, so that such
people can be suggested visiting the basic yoga group ca. up to their
age of 40. However, here we should also consider the remoteness of
the person’s professional sport activity.
As
an instructor, in terms of intaking the groups of those who want to
practice I usually focus on people aged 20 to 35 (here a rather mean
the biological age than the one given in passport) – this is the
basic group. I shall explain the figures. Though in this country the
person officially comes of full age at 18 and some people only start
living when they turn 35, for me such choice is not random. The young
generation of our age is characterized by some later emotional
maturation. And it is only by one’s 20’s that one may have some
moments initiating to adult life, so that the person starts to think
and take decisions on his own. One shall then proceed to accumulate
the life experience, while there is some solidarity in interests of
the people belonging to the ‘up to 35’ (approximately) age
category. Besides, the condition of the physical body in this period
is more or less the same, and it makes one’s practicing in one
basic group more comfortable.
To
my mind, further effective division of groups in compliance with age
scale shall be approximately the following: 35-45 years, 45-55 years
and so on.
It
also depends upon both the age and the medical condition of the
person – whether the work with one’s body should be of training,
maintaining or therapeutic character.
Within
the process of mastering yoga techniques one should always take
account of the specific features of one’s body (first of all I mean
the muscular tissue to adipose tissue ratio). It’s not always that
the person who starts to practice yoga can sort this out himself. For
instance, one usually becomes alerted when having excess weight or
being skinny. But don’t you make haste in getting rid of the
overweight by means of increasing the physical load without
establishing the reasons of the excess kilograms. This may be the
consequence of puffiness or some disease of the cardiovascular
system. Sometimes the excess adipose tissue may come as a result of
hormone disregulations or other malfunctions that assume
contra-indications against abrupt increase of exercise load. The
proper diagnosis should also be established if one’s figure is too
gaunt (you can at least start with general blood test), especially in
our time when the line between telling the slender body from the
sickly thin one is too vague.
I
don’t adhere to yoga practice treated only as the means of
upgrading the capabilities of one’s physical body. I shall be
satisfied with the minimal required level of my organism’
survivability that can provide my life with colours and my body –
with pleasant sensations.
Some
of the wise men used to compare the body with a camel that the soul
rides during its life journey. Should the camel die early, the soul
will be unable to see all the delights of its journey. But it will be
a great disappointment and regret if the whole journey turns into
mere process of taking care of the camel and combing out his hair.
