“Maybe you don’t think you’re so bad off. Just a little out of shape. Maybe worse. You have no energy and can’t climb the stairs without huffing and puffing. You’ve tried to exercise – aerobics, swimming, weight training, stair climbing. You’ve played tennis and many other sports. You’ve used machines for your legs, back, arms, and abdomen, and still nothing works. When you do sports you are hammering your body in a cold environment and you harm the body. First you destroy your skeletal system, then you destroy your nervous system, then you destroy all the tendons and ligaments, then the veins and muscles. Everything you have tried fails you. You are not the failure, your system is. Exercise doesn’t work. When you do your exercise you only exercise 3% to 10% of your body, besides the damage that you do. When you do my beginning yoga class, you exercise 100% of your body from the bone to the skin, from the head to the toes, to every gland and organ of the body, to every cell, even to tiny tissues. You have been looking in the wrong places. Now with this book you are looking in the right place.
What you are looking for is yoga. You are looking for my beginning yoga class. Yoga is the only exercise on this planet from which you gain energy instead of burning energy. Yoga maintains youth long. It keeps the body full of vitality, immune to diseases, even at old age. The yogi never becomes old. Yogis achieve the supernatural power.”
*Bikram’s Beginning Yoga Class, Bikram Choudhury.
Upon reading this yesterday, I was intrigued because of something I had been thinking about the exercise class I used to attend at my gym. Before doing the yoga, I had begun thinking that maybe all this “battering of my body,” even though I could do it, wasn’t really good for me. I especially thought this the day after I toppled over onto the the tractor tire and had two huge bruises across my thighs. Now, I am no spring chicken and I need to do things each day to take care of myself for future preservation, not undermine my body systems so they’ll fail me when I can no longer do these classes. That’s why Bikram’s book is fascinating me. I love that he says:
“It’s never too late, it’s never too bad, you’re never too old, you’re never too sick to start from scratch once again, to be born once again”.
The agelessness of the yoga practice amazes me. That the practice is for any age, any physical condition – and it heals both the physical and emotional problems we experience. It’s almost magical. This is my third week of practice (after being away last week) so I am watching and listening to my body. My previous blogs tell of my experiences before reading this book. Now, after doing this and then reading the book, I just find myself saying in my mind as I read, “yes, yes, that’s exactly what happens”. I suggest you get this book. Not only is Bikram hilarious, but you will be amazed at how the secret of youth and aging well is so simple.
Another day goes by, and again, Bikram and I have written….
Tomorrow: “I tighten all the loose screws in your head”. 🙂
Leave a Reply