parul mehta

Parul

YOGA - AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MANY LEVELS OF BEING - 12 September
Parul Mehta, a Singaporean who has been teaching yoga for two years here in Kuala Lumpur, is a gentle, soft-spoken 40-something who exudes tranquillity and inner peace. She is perhaps the best advertisement for the benefits of yoga.

Her first analogy struck a chord with many of us: Yoga aims to make us perfectly still and centred, like a top, which although spinning at an incredible speed appears motionless. Yoga brings into perfect equilibrium the Mind, Body and Breath. She says moving into stillness helps us experience the truth of who we are.

As Parul talked us through some simple relaxation and meditative exercises, the atmosphere changed from a busy, buzzy gathering of "spinning" women to a roomful of attentive, focused individuals keen to learn something new.

Many of us have a vague idea of the 5000 year-old Indian practice of yoga. Yoga is a path to enlightenment, which comes from a Sanskrit word 'Yuj' meaning to join or unite the mind, body and consciousness.

What most of us didn't realise however is that there are several paths of yoga, each resonating with a certain personality type:

Bhakti Yoga - yoga of devotion, devotion to god, appeals to the more emotional personality
Karma Yoga - yoga of action and selfless service to humanity, appeals to the more active personality
Jnana Yoga - yoga of wisdom and knowledge, appeals to the more intellectual personality
Raja Yoga - the Royal Path, which takes one from the physical to the spiritual.
This is the path associated with the modern interpretation of Yoga.

Within Raja Yoga there are 8 steps to purify the body and mind by taking you from the physical to the spiritual levels of our being. It is a life's journey, which begins with a code of correct conduct and ends with the ultimate goal of liberation:

Yamas - our relationship with others
Niyamas - our relationship with our self
Asanas - the (more familiar) physical aspect of yoga
Pranayama - breath control
Pratyahara - drawing the senses inwards
Dharana - concentration
Dhyana - meditation
Samadhi - self-enlightenment

Parul's talk was particularly enlightening to me because she matched the confusing multitude of Hatha yoga styles to individual personalities. Incidentally, Hatha comes from 'ha' representing the sun and 'tha' the moon, so the physical postures create equilibrium in body and mind by balancing the opposing solar and lunar energies. Now we can tell the difference for instance between the physically challenging Ashtanga yoga, Iyengar "furniture" yoga and Bikram "hot and sweaty" yoga, which is currently so popular with Hollywood stars. With this information we felt better equipped to find a style that suits us.

There was also a very clear and concise discussion of the relationship between the chakras and glands and how certain postures activate certain chakras for better health.

There naturally followed a most animated Q&A discussion on the difference between meditation and concentration, on the value of different diets, on diaphragmatic breathing, on the differences between Yoga and Tai Chi.

Many thanks to Parul and Jackie, who so elegantly demonstrated some of the basic moves. It was a morning well spent in Jnana yoga or the yoga of knowledge, and we all left more enlightened. I, for one, certainly saw the light!
- Gouri Mirpuri

Editor's Note: A good resource on the various aspects of yoga is www.omkriyayoga.com. Also, a great manual for both beginners and experienced yoga practitioners is Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandhaby Swami Satyananda Saraswan (Bihar Yoga Bharati; Bihar, India; 1997).

http://www.malaysianculturegroup.com/oldnewsl/nnov03.htm