There is no right or wrong way to celebrate
The end of the year is coming, and the question is: what comes to an end. Growth and prosperity continue regardless of the passage of time. While the Christmas bazaars, tress and cribs set the tone for nativity celebrations, stars and streamers have been strung, celebrating a success.
More and more people leave their homes to mingle with friends, loved ones, relatives as well as outsiders. I mean who is a stranger when you know yourself are not estranged with ‘you’? Make friends with the mind. Yoga taught me this splendid reunion. And not just with your superself, but with those all around you. Festivity is in the air.
For someone who was in spiritual isolation for over two decades, I am raking it in and thrilled to see what the city life offers. Fans still mob me. While I pose for pictures without a fuss, I am happy to pass them the message—love runs in the littlest of molecules of the ‘festive’ air around you; feel it. But that is possible only when you calm your mind.
Quieten the mental disturbances that play havoc. The fun quotient is directly linked to your emotional intelligence. The more settled you are emotionally, the more mental space you have for joy. You are open to accepting those things around that are pleasurable or not so. I am so grateful to have trained in teaching this.
Group meditation can enable compassion, a feeling of goodwill not just for you, but everyone around. Start to pass love to your close family, next-door neighbours, to your area, city, country, to all the neighbouring countries, to the whole earth and beyond. While meditation is a silent way, kirtan is a devotional group recitation, or narration of spiritual and religious ideas. The word kirtan comes from a Sanskrit root that means to ‘call, recite, praise, or glorify’.
As a community practice, it is often performed as a call-on-response singing and mantras, which are sacred sound and formulas. One leader, called the kirtankara, sings god’s name or a mantra and the group repeats it. While Hindu texts describe the spiritual practice as one that has existed eternally, kirtan was popularised in the sixth century with the Bhakti movement.
Out of the four kinds of yoga I trained in during my spiritual exile, Bhakti yoga is the process of uniting ourselves with the Divine through love and devotion, as espoused in the Bhagwad Gita. It can facilitate the awakening in you by energising you.
Living a yoga life by the Ganga, kirtan was a part of our everyday life. One day on Mahashivaratri, we were in the kirtan hall when an Australian sanyasi sang ‘Hallelujah Hallelujah’ after a Krishna kirtan. My body swayed in a trance. A couple of years later, I was taken to the next level of devotional ecstasy. Nada yoga—the yoga of sound—taught me to still the body and find the dance within, on chakra level.
Whatever you do, let joy continue. Right or wrong, your way to celebrate is the right way for you.
Anu Aggarwal
Actor, speaker, yogi and author
Instagram: @anusualanu