(Message of Himalaya Master – 202/207)
(1) Yoga teachers who know at least the practical basics of pratyahara exercises know perfectly well that injuries that sometimes happen to yoga practitioners result not only from incorrect movement patterns, which more and more practitioners in the West write about but also from incorrect thought patterns and bad emotions nourished by many practitioners in the West. Pratyahara is all practices and therapies that free one from toxic emotions, bad thoughts, wrong ideas, and incorrect views, including fears, anxieties, delusions or suspicions. The very wrong beliefs about yoga and how to practice yoga can cause bad mental patterns and several injuries affecting areas of the body that are sensitive to bad thought patterns, such as the knee joints, neck and vision problems. Wrong views about nutrition in yoga are among the most common mistakes made by yoga instructors, who often promote some harmful dietary system instead of teaching how to make yoghurt, yoghurt water or clarified butter known as ghee and suggest practising control over the need for nutrition through one-day water fasts on Ekadaśi days and new and full moons. Instead of yogic knowledge, people in the West are taught academic ideas of joint and muscle mechanics for competitive sports that are terribly contusive, which is a distortion of yoga and spreading confusion instead of the science of yoga, which should be taught in yoga. The principles of proper yogic nutrition belong to the first group of practices, to anga in the ashta-anga system known as yama, and the corresponding sub-point mentioned in yogic didactics textbooks is mitahara – moderate nutrition. Therefore, before we develop training in asanas other than the basic ones used for sitting in meditation or for relaxation in a lying position, the practitioner must learn a dozen or so basic tips on how to take care of proper nutrition in the practice of yoga. And no extreme absurdities in the form of extreme veganism or, on the other hand, the Kwaśniewski or Atkins diet, because neither anorexic nor poisonous meat diets causing diseases may be introduced into yoga. The views often spread in pseudo-yoga groups from America that the way of eating in yoga does not matter and that only asanas should be focused on is also one of the wrong, bad and very harmful views causing mental confusion and, as a result, injuries to the body or mind and senses, i.e. mental disorders.
(2) The recommendations for many asanas are that a meal before practising them can be eaten six hours earlier, and this is something important to observe so that you do not harm yourself by practising such an asana after eating or gorging on anything. Yogis knew thousands of years ago that intensive practice of some asanas causes the displacement of toxins (amas) from the abdomen, from the inside of the intestines and kidneys to the hip and knee joints, so before the adept was allowed to practice these asanas more intensively, for several years, usually at least three years, hatha yoga adepts cleansed their intestines of toxic deposits called ama (amas) with the help of enemas and appropriate Ayurvedic treatments, i.e. medical rasayanas. Failure to cleanse with the help of the six groups of preparatory exercises (śodhana), which include enemas and nasal rinses, as well as trataka on a fire flame, is one of the most serious and, at the same time, thoughtless mistakes that are commonly made by people practising various Western forms of pseudo-yoga in the West. Amas can also be moved from the intestines to the heart and cause heart weakness or touch disorders, or to the head where it can cause migraines and chronic headaches, weakened vision, hearing or memory. Therefore, Many asanas require a thorough cleansing of the abdominal cavity, including the kidneys, bladder and intestines, from toxins accumulated there. Sometimes, even simple asanas such as kurmakasana, and not only longer-practiced mayurasana can cause unpleasant symptoms of illness in the body. Before starting to practice asanas, it is very often necessary to check whether the energy flowing in the nostrils is in balance or whether the energy of the nostril appropriate for the asana practice is stronger, otherwise, you cannot even start light asana training, and you do energetic breathing exercises introducing the appropriate flow of the energy quality required for the asana practice. In this way, the occurrence of side effects of an undesirable nature is limited, which is normally well-known and observed by every properly learned instructor of true hatha yoga or another authentic form of yoga teaching asanas in greater quantities than just a position for relaxation or simple meditation. Pseudo-instructors of pseudo-yoga in the West usually have no idea about these energetic rules, which is why they owe their charming names of vile animals in yoga treatises such charming and delicate sounding, indicating the form of future multiple rebirths due to ignorance and lack of education and instilling in people fictitious fantasies instead of the sublime true philosophy in the form of yoga darśana or sankhya darśana.
(3) Practitioners also often wrongly associate with yoga some of the unpleasant sensations they experience, although they may be related to the place where yoga is practised. A person sensitive to chemically toxic substances may experience nausea, vomiting, dizziness, or even fainting in a recently renovated or built gymnasium, where the amount of varnishes and other poisons used in the finishing of the facility is too toxic for them. They simply have to change the place of practice or undergo a desensitisation process, if possible in their case. On the other hand, in an old gym, where the floors are already well worn, the mattresses, mats and blankets have many years of training behind them, there are mites to which some people in the group may be allergic and the problem with allergic reactions will appear again, and many people suffer from severe headaches or migraine symptoms even with a small number of mites in the air. Good intensive ventilation in the room will reduce the problem but will usually not eliminate it completely. You probably need to make a new floor and replace the mats and blankets with new ones, which will help for a while. It should be remembered that basically all yoga exercises are performed only in places with good ventilation and a solid supply of fresh air, so it is debatable whether yoga can be practised in cities with terrible smog. A similar problem is posed by Western gyms, which are usually rooms filled with the mustiness of sweat and urine, completely failing to meet the requirements of a room for yogic practices such as asanas, mudras, bandhas or pranayama.
(4) If we enter a hot gym from cold air and start intensive asana training, the asana exercise itself does not cause injuries or problems with tendons or muscles, and the cause is too rapid a temperature jump because the body gets used to the temperature change for about 30 minutes to an hour, so the cause of injuries in asanas is that the ambient temperature around the body has changed too quickly. This also applies to exercise clothes, where in a coat or jacket and sweater we are warm, even in the cold, and in the gym, in shorts and a T-shirt, there is a difference about this clothing of at least double digits in degrees Celsius, and the problem begins with more frequent injuries and contusions of joints, tendons and muscles. For this reason, in the East, people practice in the clothes they wear so as not to change the body’s thermals, and not in some fancy Western outfit called sportswear, which makes it easier to get injuries and traumas with greater temperature differences, and is also completely inappropriate for moral reasons. You also need to instil the habit of arriving at yoga classes earlier if there is a large temperature difference between the practice room and the current weather conditions.
(5) With a faster rhythm of asana practice, people who are too distracted and absent-minded often become victims of their own distraction, which results in injuries, which is why at the beginning, during the first years of practice, asanas and asana series are practised slowly, in a slow rhythm, and not at the pace of a fast walk or run, not in acceleration. Only when the ability to concentrate on what is being practised significantly improves can we practice in a faster rhythm. You should also not warm up with a quick asana exercise in a cold room because the very idea of a warm-up suggests a slow and gradual warm-up of the body from more gentle and calm movements to stronger and faster ones. An improper pace of performing exercises can be a serious mistake in sthulla kriya training, especially asanas performed by uneducated instructors and self-taught people, especially since you can often find textbook instructions that the first half hour of yoga classes should proceed in a rhythm of relaxation and relief to neutralise mental tensions in the body. Inattention, absent-mindedness, distraction, thinking about something else – all these are also potential causes of injuries during body movement, especially during fast and intensive body movement. Generally, awareness of what you are doing, regardless of what you are doing, prevents injuries and accidents, so in any case, a lack of awareness of what you are doing during training is the most likely cause of every accident and, therefore, injury. However, if the instructor himself does not know anything about what ćittam is or how to develop it, the student will certainly be exposed to numerous injuries and contusions in any training.
(6) A separate problem is the diet, which is often inappropriate for the practice of any form of yoga, and yoga clearly recommends the consumption of cow’s milk and its products, including clarified butter known as Ghee, as well as natural yoghurt and yoghurt water. Yoga for real training recommends a diet that is healthy for the body and mind, based on plant products, but this system of healthy nutrition also includes foods produced by animals, such as milk and its products, honey or eggs, and sometimes also small freshwater or sea fish in small quantities as an optional product for those for whom the typical vegetarian diet of yogis is too restrictive anyway. A body that is too cold due to an inappropriate diet of a vegan or raw food type is caused by injuries during more intense effort, stretching, or exercise; practical observations have proven this thousands of years ago. Improper nutrition, lack of bowel cleansing with an enema, lack of nasal cleansing with a water rinse, training too soon after eating, lack of proper relaxation before starting asanas, lack of spiritual concentration and excessive distraction of thoughts – these are also mistakes of people intensively practising asanas, bandhas and mudras, which in yoga are collectively called practices of the third group, sthulla kriya angam. It is worth remembering that before starting exercises from the third group of ashtanga called asanas, one should perform more basic practices from the first and second groups, i.e. yama and niyama. Bad movements are those in which breathing is conducted incorrectly, and as is known during the practice of asanas, breathing must generally be calm, rhythmic, quite deep and properly conducted in terms of direction and type (inhalation, exhalation, apnea or retention). This is what an instructor candidate learns from the first day of the internship for candidates for yoga instructors. It should be remembered that yoga, and especially yogic asanas, bandhas or mudras, are not practised competitively for a quick effect or to show how much you already know and what a great range of movement you have. In practising asanas, the direction of movement and the rhythm of breathing are important, and the range of movement is of little importance, which every yoga instructor knows from the first training if they have practised yoga. The traditional set of ten principles of yama and ten principles of niyama for hatha yoga, according to Rishi Samkriti or Rishi Svatmarama, mentions the necessity of such exercises as vrata, i.e. spiritual vows, promises, and japa, which means practising mantrams and mantric invocations.
Many Blessings on the Path of Awakening and Realization! Om Namaśśivaya!
HUM!
The Himalaya Master
