Author: Maura Moynihan
Publication: India Today
Date: December 18, 2006
In 1973 I moved to India with my family. I
plunged into the study of Vedic civilisation, and all roads led to yoga.
In Delhi I attended Hindi High, otherwise known as the, American International
School, where my Indian Studies class took me to Rishikesh, to the Shivananda
ashram. Here I was initiated into ashram life and the study of classical
yoga. Then, I started visiting a yoga ashram in Delhi in the morning before
school. When I returned to the US in 1975 I searched with little success for
a yoga ashram. Americans were mad about jogging and jazzercise. By the
early 1990s, power yoga was in and the Jane Fonda workout was out. The other
night, as I lingered in a Soho bar, I overheard two ladies of fashion
compare lyengar and Ashtanga techniques as they sipped Cosmopolitans, and,
I marvelled at the Vedic civilisation, manifesting anew in a chic corner of
Manhattan. My own yoga practice mixes Kundalini, Iyengar and Shivananda. Yoga
has saved my life, it certainly has kept me from being sick and fragile. No
matter where I am or what I am doing, if I can withdraw into yoga for even
five minutes, I can connect to the ancient Vedic wisdom of Mother India. I've
learned to merge yoga with my daily survival functions and have created a
highly successful yoga routine for long airplane rides which reduces jetlag.
I've preserved my eyesight with tratak, which can be done on the subway or
in a queue at the bank. And pranayama can be done anywhere, anytime. One of
my Kundalini teachers stated, if one can get the same results in five minutes
with one technique that would take an hour with another, why not use
the five-minute method? It doesn't matter what kind of yoga you practice as
long as you do it.
Maura Moynihan (The writer is the author of
a collection of short stories, Yoga Hotel)
