(Mind46)- Are you a ‘physical’ person?

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Many of us are good at ‘physical’ activities than at intellectual tasks. Anything that involves action, appeals to us and we can do that easily.

If I ask you to sit in one place and concentrate, probably you will find it very difficult. But you may be good at sports, may be good runners, good musicians, good cooks, and what not. But merely sitting and thinking is not your cup of tea. You just can’t keep your mental focus.

That is but natural. Very early in our growing up, we learn to focus on physical skills first than on purely mental ones. One of the first things a new born learns is how to suckle its mother’s breasts!
We develop mental focus only later on as we grow up. Well, some of us don’t 😉

That may be the reason why Yoga exercises appeal to most people. Even though a well designed and executed Yoga exercise does demand mental focus, most do it like any other physical exercise – which I normally ridicule as mere twisting and turning 😉

So, here you are. If you are basically a ‘physical person’ a well-designed Yoga exercise can be a good focusing technique for you. But don’t skip the ‘alignment’ or ‘breathing rhythm’ that is normally clubbed with these exercises. Otherwise, you will be just burning some calories and may not achieve much mental focus.

If you remember our discussion on the history of Iyengar Yoga a few episodes ago, Iyengar’s Guru came up with this form of ‘physical Yoga’ for the benefit of ‘physical’ people, namely the soldiers and members of the Royal family, for whom he was a teacher.

Mr. Iyengar added his concepts of alignment to these basically physical exercises. The alignment forces you to pay attention to your body and delicate balance. But if you miss out that, it is as good as any other exercise with just a tag ‘Yoga’ added to it 😉


Now-a-days everybody is very busy. They have no time for doing any exercise let alone Yoga exercises. Our Gurus don’t want to exclude such people. So, they offer ‘micro yoga’ – a quick exercise that is claimed to be ‘powerful’!


Some highly imaginative Gurus have even gone a step further. They offer ‘Mudras’ – simple finger manipulations that can do marvels 😉.

No twisting and turning, no holding your breath, no delicately balancing your body. Just manipulate your fingers; you can achieve anything in the world and health is only a small part of its claimed benefits!

Many authors have written hot sellers on these Mudras. They have impressive theories on how they work. They talk about electromagnetism, five basic elements or Panca Bhootas, acupuncture, acupressure, all in one single breath 😉 They claim support from Hatayoga texts, trace its origin to ancient Indian Vedas and so on.

But to my knowledge, this word Mudra originally belonged to ancient tantric practices where it was one of the 5 ‘M’ s – others being Matsya (fish), Mamsa (meat), Madya (liquor), Maithuna (ritual sex). Originally Mudra meant some body contortions meant to give sexual control.

As the tantric practices got reformed, this word Mudra got converted into a word denoting hand gestures that can be seen in modern Hindu neo Tantric religious rituals.

In Hatayoga, this word meant body postures or contortions meant to arouse the Kundalini.

This word is also used in totally disjoint disciplines such as classical Indian dance for example, to convey hand gestures.

But nowhere the word Mudra conveys what these modern ‘Yoga Gurus’ are talking about.

So, the Mudra propagated by the modern ‘Yoga Gurus’ seems to be some new innovation!

But many people claim that they really work! How?

I guess that what these Mudra do is to keep your attention fixed on one physical activity. At least initially, one needs to concentrate to keep the fingers in an unnatural position. So, they may serve as a focusing technique. I would rather not talk much about the whole lot of theories supposedly behind these Mudras 😉


If you are really under lot of stress, may be even these Mudras help you to relieve some stress due to the short periods of focusing you do. Remember the ‘Yogic law of exponentiation’ that I talked about earlier? Higher the stress, more effective will be ‘any’ technique, does not matter which!


In the past several episodes, we talked about many ways we can train our attention system. Now the big question is - which of these techniques is the best? Or are they all same – sort of an á la carte menu of possibilities? We will see that in the next episode.

 

A series revolving around Mind – Science of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Notions of reality, Mind modulation, Domains beyond Mind, and so on. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2019-2020