I work for a health care company and a great majority of my time at the office is spent in browsing articles in medical journals. No wonder, anything related to health fascinates me.
While on my morning walk today, the poster of a yoga studio displaying a man with both feet in air and legs in pedaling motion amused me. Being a yoga practitioner since my college days, I tried hard, but could come nowhere close to remember this particular yoga pose. I found a very close association between this and the iconic bicycle kick of Pele.
To me the poster meant that after learning yoga, Indian men would be able to perform bicycle kicks with ease and join the leagues of Argentine midfielder Diego Maradona or Mexican forward Hugo Sánchez, marginally increasing our perpetually diminishing probability of qualifying for the world cup. Returned home and watched a few bicycle kicks getting converted to goals.
Googled the stats of bicycle kicks getting converted to goals. Found it to be very low (not worth mentioning), and with a heavy heart pondered upon the declining prospects of Indian football.
Up till now, I had come across posters inviting people for free yoga classes or classes conducted for a reasonable fee. I should say from the beginning, I was averse to the word “studio” for anything as ancient as yoga. To say the least, a near similar oxymoron would be the labelling of all forms of art that appear to be outside the realm of an individual’s artistic comprehension as “contemporary”, irrespective of the art being as old as the Vikings.:)
I called up this “yoga studio” and made a few enquiries:
Me: * Yoga Studio?”
“Just wanted to know on which all days you conduct classes and the ANNUAL fee”?
Yoga Studio: “Madam, we conduct classes once a week for an hour at a MONTHLY fee of Rs 4000.”
The commercialization of this ancient vedic practice is indeed disheartening which brings me to my first question, “Should peace of mind and good health be always linked to the money you got?”
I strongly feel for a start; we could adopt a goodwill movement similar to the one in the Hollywood movie “Pay it Forward”. The movie’s protagonist 11-year-old Trevor McKinney does a favor for three people, asking each of them to “pay the favor forward” by doing favors for three other people, and so on, along a branching tree of good deeds. In our context, say, those who know this practice well and have acquired the skills under the supervision of a guru may pass it on to their peers. True, considering the state of affairs that we are in today, one who has acquired the necessary yoga skills by paying an exorbitant fee is more likely to charge a fee and sooner, if not later convert the same to a business. Monetary rewards are always tempting; however, I am sure each one of us at some point in our lives have felt voids within us, which all the money in the world could not fill. Acts like these, my friend, can certainly reduce the depth of these voids.
*Withholding the name of the studio for reasons known to mankind;-. Also, my astrologer has predicted a long life for me, and I don’t want to leave a void in his heart by falsifying his prediction. (Pun intended)
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