The benefits of yoga have gained greater awareness today. More people are practicing yoga as a way to achieve physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. The health benefits of yoga are abundant. Yoga is essentially a spiritual discipline that focuses on bringing harmony between body and mind. Regular practice of yoga contributes to positive changes in the perspective towards life, self-awareness, and improved energy levels to live life to the fullest.
Yogic practices are found in the Vedas. The symbolic depictions found in ancient remains from the Indus Valley Civilization strongly signify that Yoga is several thousand years old.
Maharishi Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and other ancient Yoga literature like Hathayoga Pradipika, Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, etc. manifest Yoga as the supreme and simplest means to attain liberation.
Yoga as a word is so small in size, yet its depth is infinite. Yoga means to blend with your inner being and experience it. This higher state comes when practitioners physically and mentally harmonize with the divine. In such a state, there is no dissimulation, and everything transforms from duality to non-duality.
With the vast knowledge that Yoga beacons for mankind to reach the ultimate goal of life, that is, liberation, it would be interesting to see the place of Yoga in today’s world. The immense knowledge in Yoga and the clean positive effects of Yogic practices on body and mind made it a global buzzword in a very short period of time, but, the high-paced modern world has its own takeaway from that knowledge ocean, and that takeaway is ‘Wellness’. Yoga has shrunk to some physical and mental exercises being adopted by most people globally either to gain and promote a healthy lifestyle or to improve health in existing disease conditions. It is no longer being promoted or learned as a path to achieve absolute or liberation.
However, it is also true that the world we are living in today is grappling with a most common problem, which is poor health. The ultimate aim of Yoga is achievable with only a healthy body and a healthy mind. So, one may optimistically assume that mankind has taken its first step towards the ultimate goal of life.
The establishment of a Standardization Department for Ayush systems and the formation of a dedicated Sectional Committee on yoga at BIS is an impressive accomplishment that will hasten the development of National standards in the field of yoga for the benefit of the common man, industry, and other stakeholders. BIS has recently published four Indian standards related to yoga, viz., Glossary of Yoga Terminology, Yoga Centre-Service Requirements, Cotton Yoga Mat, and Stainless-Steel Neti Pot Specification.
Finally, it may be concluded that the growing popularity of Yoga among people from almost all walks of life reinforces the fact that the ancient science of Yoga resonates well with the modern world of the 21st century. Yoga’s deep-rooted knowledge, its completeness, and its holistic approach make it relevant today, and it will surely keep beaconing forever in the future for the upliftment of mankind.