Look before you leap! Do some thinking before you take up responsibilities. If you have hurriedly taken up a job and you come to realize gradually that the task is more than you can manage, be honest enough to confess this and inform the concerned persons about it.
I will learn yoga, I will practice the techniques like Asanas and Pranayamas etc. and I will look for the results like Siddhis and Samadhi; or I will perform Sirasana for half an hour and expect wonderful reactions in my brain and my nervous system.
All this is wrong. If I wish to learn yoga I should introduce myself to this deeply interiorised science by being conditioned, by being quiet, by being aware of physical, psychological, and psycho-physical functioning in my body and mind.
Contrarily when something physical is done like speaking violently with gestures and emotions a wave of agitation sets in and ends in angry behaviour. The action leads to psychological and sub-conscious impression, numerous attitudes and subsequent behaviour.
Such apparently simple looking “hurting” has been divided into 81 categories in the Yoga sutra commentaries. And that is why in an exaggerated way, they say that, “if you master Ahimsa you master yoga”. Ahimsa Paramo Dharma.
Published in the June 2011 edition of Yoga & Total Health Magazine.