Breathe in, breathe out. Relax the mind and revitalise the body. For urbanites, attending yoga classes has come to mean a quick route to spiritual wellness, a limber body and glowing skin. As numbers rise for those looking to fit in 45 minutes of yogic exercises - endorsed by ancient Indian sages and recent beauty icons - between meetings and club nights, yoga centres have caught up with the trend, offering 'solutions' that claim to calm the modern mind and effect weight loss, the latter being a permanent pursuit of city dwellers.
Like most world cities, Bangalore is witness to the mushrooming of yoga classes and with it, new-fangled ways of practising yoga.
On August 10, in a bid to 'popularise yoga', enthusiasts practised asanas to a Blues acoustic guitar and a mouth organ playing the background at an Indiranagar hotel. According to Manish Pole, director of Total Yoga, Bangalore which organised the event, music assists students who can't focus. "Yoga has to respond to the needs today's students," he says.
Highlighting the huge gap between yoga hopefuls about 2000 years ago and now, he states that then an 18-year-old would have been living with his guru, walking up and down hills making for cardio exercises and carrying water that would have doubled as weight training. "In the '70s and '80s, people suffering from various ailments sought yoga as a therapy. Yoga practices B K S Iyengar devised then, are now seen traditional. The point is, yoga is a science that has to evolve, it is not a religion. Also, nobody owns it, and there are no strict rights and wrongs in the way it adapts to modern life. People now take yoga classes as a fitness regimen and a way to de-stress," says Pole, who instructs classes that offer a mix of vinyasa, haath and power yoga.
Of the fashionable styles of yoga available all over the city are power yoga and a somewhat exclusive hot yoga. "In the late '80s and '90s, a lot of gyms in the West began to experiment with yoga. The number of trainees learning yoga jumped. When yoga is practised in the ambit of a fitness centre where members are looking for flat abs, it gets treated as another school of exercise. That's how power yoga includes squats, push-ups and even dumbbells," says Pole.
Hot yoga is practised in a room heated to about 40 degree Celsius. It was intended at creating conducive temperatures for yoga in places which are very cold, like northern American and Europe, making it an odd package for tropical India.
For Indira Chavva, a Hatha yoga practitioner who also trains people in hot yoga, this kind of yoga could become a stepping stone for trainees to move to 'higher yogic practices'. "Today, I see that people who enrol for yoga classes can barely sit cross-legged for two minutes, let alone meditate. They are battling extreme levels of stress and the physical activity helps de-stress. As their schedules are packed, the heat in the room hastens the burning of fat and flushes out toxins as they sweat."
She feels first-timers must begin with a combination of body and breath exercises before they move onto meditation.
It is such inventions and others that yoga purists are uncomfortable with. "The purpose of yoga is to steady the body and the mind, where the body is used to hold the posture and the mind is used to concentrate and regulate the breath. But in power yoga, I have heard that the pace of the asanas are increased. It's like aerobics, and there's nothing wrong with that, but why call it yoga?," asks A Nagendra Kamath, director of Rashtotthana Yogic Sciences and Research.
Later this month, two yoga schools in the city are organising an event to bring 'yogis' across the city to Cubbon Park for an hour-long session of yoga. Kamath feels that music in yoga classes helps soothe the mind and aids focus, but he objects to taking yoga outdoors. "In his book 'Hatha Yoga', Swami Svatmarama has advocated exercising in a sheltered place - preferably a hut that keeps out wind as it can lead to fluctuations in the body temperature. It also filters out noise and other distractions," says Kamath.
A practitioner who prefers to stick to the traditional approach, Kamath insists that his students must follow a vegetarian diet in the very least.
"Apart from this, we also advise them to avoid fatty foods and fast food. It is preferable they not take a nap in the afternoon and have a light dinner three hours prior to bedtime," he says.