Yoga is one of the most ancient Indian Philosophical and Practical system propounded by sage Patanjali (150BCE). Yoga enhances the potentialities of the people. One should control the mind and practice the moral and ethical disciplines before attempting serious Yoga. Yoga should become lifestyle and people should control their food habits, entertainment, trade and commerce in order to be good citizens of the country. Ever since UNO declared June 21st as International Day of Yoga, celebration of this event has become a good phenomenon. Yoga is not about stretching of the body, it is about the self realization.
Yoga-Indian Ethos
Yoga should become a part of our everyday life. Yoga is an ancient Indian science having a scientific background which has an antiquity of 11,500 years. Practice of Yoga can enhance physical, mental, emotional, intellectual and spiritual powers of people. Sage Patanjali says: ‘Yoga can control the modification of our mind-stuff’. Sage Vashisth says in Yoga Vashista treatise that ‘The means for calming mind is called Yoga. India is in the frontline of information technology, biotechnology, nano-science and other types of research. The internal and external stresses of people in these fields can be relieved by practicing Yoga and also for attaining peace and comfort. Various Yoga organization and NGOs and several central universities have popularized Yoga worldwide with efforts.
Yoga and Health
The systems of Ayurveda, Veda and Yoga have enhanced the health and longevity of Indians since time immemorial. Chakara while elaborating on the issue of health of an individual says that complete health means the totality of health body, sense organs and pleasant mind which has been incorporated in the motto of World Health Organisation. In this context, the great contributions of ancient Indian medical doctors like Chakras, Nagarjuna and other Vedic sages merit our attention.
Yoga and Youth:
Yoga should be imparted to children from very young age and it should become their lifestyle. Yoga would become a powerful means for promoting ageless Indian culture and tradition. The practice and perfect understanding of four streams of Yoga such as knowledge ( Jnana Yoga), action (Karma Yoga), devotion (Bhakti Yoga) and meditation (Raja Yoga) would calm down body, mind and release stress. Indian youth who form more than 50% of total population should practice Yoga for the overall development of their personalities. One can learn good habits, become model citizens on the country by practicing Yoga ethics and this alone can bring holistic health for people. Yoga lore are the principles and techniques that are practically applied in the SMET (Self-Management Excessive Tension) program, which has received global popularity for its effectiveness in the stress reduction. Especially the super-busy Executive world has finding great value in regular SMET practice; as it brings about the ‘expansion of awareness’ and ‘depth of perception’ through cyclic pattern of stimulation and relaxation. Yoga could promote the concept of ‘Earth is but one family’ (Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam). India can emerge in yogic and spiritual planes and earn the encomium of Yoga Vishwa Guru among the comity of nations in the coming years.


more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was supposed to be undergoing.”I know how it will be,” his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this rural retreat; “you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember, were quite nice.”Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.”Do you know many of the people round here?” asked the niece, when she judged that they had had sufficient silent communion.”Hardly a soul,” said Framton. “My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know, some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people here.”He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.”Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?” pursued the self-possessed young lady.”Only her name and address,” admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room seemed to suggest masculine habitation. “Her great tragedy happened just three years ago,” said the child; “that would be since your sister’s time.””Her tragedy?” asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.”You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,” said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.”It is quite warm for the time of the year,” said Framton; “but has that window got anything to do with the tragedy?””Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young brothers went off for their day’s shooting. They never came back. In crossing the moor to their favourite snipe-shooting ground they were all three engulfed in a treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it.” Here the child’s voice lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. “Poor aunt always thinks that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm, and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing ‘Bertie, why do you bound?’ as he always did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in through that window—”She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.”I hope Vera has been amusing you?” she said.”She has been very interesting,” said Framton.”I hope you don’t mind the open window,” said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; “my husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way. They’ve been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so they’ll make a fine mess over my poor carpets. So like you men-folk, isn’t it?”She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic; he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention, and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.”The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement,” he continued. “No?” said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention—but not to what Framton was saying.”Here they are at last!” she cried. “Just in time for tea, and don’t they look as if they were muddy up to the eyes!”Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction.In the deepening twilight three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: “I said, Bertie, why do you bound?”Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the gravel-drive, and the front gate were dimly-noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along the road had to run into the hedge to avoid an imminent collision.”Here we are, my dear,” said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through the window; “fairly muddy, but most of it’s dry. Who was that who bolted out as we came up?””A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel,” said Mrs. Sappleton; “could only talk about his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost.””I expect it was the spaniel,” said the niece calmly; “he told me he had a horror of dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make anyone lose their nerve.”Romance at short notice was her speciality.

