Yoga can help achieve marital bliss, says Brahmasri Professor K.S. Sundareysan of Patanjalee Yoga Foundation, Chennai.

Yoga can help improve marital life and bring back cheer into the hearts of couples, said Brahmasri Professor K.S. Sundareysan, a renowned yoga master and founder of Patanjalee Yogaa Foundation in Indira Nagar, Chennai.

“Modern world is undergoing lot of frustration and the only way to come out of it is to learn and practice yoga. The yoga we teach is not one of renunciation but one of acceptance. You don’t need to give up all your bad habits like smoking, drinking etc to take up yoga. You can simply live your life as you normally do when you take up yoga. It is guaranteed that even as little as 10 minutes daily practice on a regular basis will improve greatly the quality of life and your bad habits will slip away automatically,” he said.

Yoga can help bring peace and harmony into the lives of couples and reduce tension in their daily lives thereby contributing to the well being of the family. It infuses moral values, personal discipline, contentment and commitment. Yoga can offer spiritual light, psychic abilities, perfect physical health and a peaceful inner mind or inner happiness, he added.

He said studies have revealed that practicing particular asanaas has helped correct infertility and erectile dysfunctional problems in men. Regular pranayamam and yogasanas before marriage will help grooms and brides get ready for the institution called marriage. It improves nervous system in men and in the case of brides it helps improve the areas around the pelvic bones so that they can have a safe and comfortable delivery.

Those suffering from premature ejaculation and lack of staying power have found tremendous improvement in their marital life after practicing special asanaas with the guidance of gurus.

There are pre-natal and post-natal yogic exercises for women. There are specific asanaas for pregnant women between first month and third month, third month and sixth month and some easy exercises for the remaining three months. There is a wrong notion that pregnant women should not practice yoga. However, he cautioned that pregnant women should do yoga strictly under the supervision of a knowledgeable yoga master and not with the help of books or cassettes, he cautioned

Also, women should do specific yogasanas after delivery to flatten their tummy and avoid complications such as diabetes and hormonal imbalance that strike women after childbirth. Yoga also helps in natural family planning as sexual desire can be curtailed by practicing specific asanaas. “Yoga will reduce tension in sexual life, prolong sexual activities and maintains vitality better than Viagra”, he added. “It helps improve self confidence in married men and corrects the imbalance in the nervous system, a must for happy married life.”

“Many men feel diffident and lack self confidence before marriage. They are scared to enter into wedlock thinking that they may be unfit. These and other kinds of imaginary feelings and phobias can be cured with the help of yoga, which is safe without any side effects. There is no better tonic than yoga and the asanaas are effective in the prevention of disease and in aiding the cure of existing illness as well.

Tell me one medical system that offers this and more for prince to peasant, child to grandparent and ailing to robust. Yoga is an ancient and a universal science designed to give a healthy body and a healthy mind to every single human being on earth. Yoga is not an oriental culture but universal. With the advancement of civilization and as tensions grow manifold; human beings are under great stress and strain looking for avenues to unburden themselves. This is the reason that modern medical science is now facing a challenge not able to ameliorate the sufferings of mankind”, he noted.

“Within the last century, diseases have sprung up with new and renewed vigor and dimensions, expressions and manifestations and this has peaked in the last few decades. Medical science has put an end to the great plagues of the past, but are now faced with a new epidemic of stress-related disorders caused by people’s inability to adapt to the highly competitive pace of modern life”, he said.

“Psychosomatic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, migraine, asthma, ulcers, digestive disorders, skin diseases arise from tensions in the body and mind. The leading cause of death in developed countries, cancer and heart diseases stem from tension too. The international problem today is not hunger, poverty, drugs or fear of war. It’s tension, hypertension and total tension. If you know how to free yourself from tension, you know how to solve your problems in life. If you are able to balance your tensions, you can control your emotions, anger and passions, heart diseases, hypertension and angina pectoris”, he added.

More than 90 percent of the diseases today originate from the mind. If the diseases originate from the mind and emotions should we not discover a new way of therapy and that to me is yoga. In the last few decades, yoga has come to rescue men from the crisis and has induced significant changes in many parts of the world.

Says the professor, “You need to learn yoga from a competent teacher. A competent teacher means that he lives the life of a yogic and that he knows the science. He should tell you what you should practice and should know what diabetic men should not practice. Yoga can’t and should not be learnt from books but only with the help of a competent and experienced teacher

PYROTECHNICS IN our streets are becoming increasingly common and annoyingly strident. When it takes the form of burning effigies of leaders as an expression of the democratic right of dissent and claiming constitutional protection, rival parties `cry foul'. Art. 19 protects protests and processions. And in prohibiting demonstrations courts often do not see eye to eye with the police and the establishment. "Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of everything and in no instance is this more true than in political demonstrations", words of Chief Justice Evans of the U.S. Supreme Court. He adds "it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding fruits." Black flags are also allergic to those in power. Ministerial tribes and their minions are hypersensitive when their political foes practise these ancient arts. Better ignore the hot air and flames that don't hurt.

India's first experience of this form of blazing belligerence was when Gandhiji exhorted all Indians to boycott foreign cloth and burn it ceremonially in public. Men and women gathered in numbers round such bonfires and were duly marched to jail. That was the law then, though the whole thing was so harmless except that it infused the "Swaraj and Swadeshi" spirit in an otherwise spiritless people. Even then there were some officers who saw the lawlessness of the police action and avoided any harsh action by devious means.

Not intolerant

Here are a few lines from a diary of an ICS officer then serving in Madras Presidency: "A band of them came to me at the Sub- collector's office and told me that they were going to burn foreign cloth that evening and that I might arrest them if I thought fit. I told them that they would not be arrested provided they burnt the foreign cloth belonging to them, and in a private place and they might do this after 5-30 p.m. so that my work in the office might not be disturbed by going to the place and watching the operations. They chose a big compound wall belonging to one of them and went through the burning. The Inspector of Police and his DSP were not at all pleased with what I said. Barring a minor exchange with the English Collector nothing happened." The British rule was not intolerant.

All the followers of Gandhiji were not votaries of Ahimsa. During the first Civil Disobedience Movement, in the wake of that horrible carnage at Jallianwala Bagh, a few constables who were needlessly brutal were locked up in their own police station and burnt alive. It shocked Gandhiji instantaneously, and what began as a promising freedom struggle was called off and the Mahatma entered on his `fast' as a penance. About 40 years later the anti-Hindi agitation took many police lives and left behind charred bodies and burnt-out buses, and nobody missed a meal!

Polite but effective

Of course historically, widowhood always turned out to be a `burning' issue. It still does. The poor girl mounts the funeral pyre with a large audience witnessing the show. Even then there was in the early colonial days Napier, who stopped this practice not by a posse of police opening fire on the assembled mourners but by simply telling them "If it is your custom to burn a widow alive, please go on. We have a custom in our country that whoever burns a person alive shall be hanged. While you prepare the funeral pyre, my carpenters will be making the gallows to hang all of you. Let us all act according to our customs." The girl's life was saved.

After Independence, all dissent is finally expressed in leaping blaze. From Andhra agitation and even earlier, to some policeman allegedly teasing a woman, public buildings, public transport and private cars are torched. Tamil Nadu had no history of such fascination for flames, but now we march in step with others if not actually lead them.

Looked at from any angle, effigy burning is a harmless sport. In the United States till the September 11 horror, even national flags were not spared. The First Amendment covered this right, privileged expression constitutionally protected. If we suppress effigy burning or for that matter, black flag demonstrations, the malcontents will resort to wanton violence. Regulate it as the old ICS officer did in Berhampur 75 years ago, and it will be fun.

Those in public life should have a thick skin. Some fun at their expense is permissible. Nehru welcomed Shankar's barbed cartoons aimed at him. He never thought of MISA and Goondas Act. Neither our PM nor his supporters should bay for the blood of the excited AIADMK men for their bloodless demonstrations. Prudence advises us to ignore it. Let me tell you, most of us don't like effigies. I don't like to burn an effigy. I will never burn one. But I won't agree to set the law on those who burn effigies without any other mischief. Art. 19 protects such acts. Incendiarism, howsoever innocent, should be amenable to regulation. Police can do that. Rajaji had this advice to critics of effigy burning and black flags: "Go and have a cold shower. All your excitement will be washed away".

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