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International Yoga Day 

IIITH celebrated International Yoga Day online on 21 June. Participants were taught yoga techniques and meditation, followed by discussions on the efficacy and importance of yoga. 

Yoga is the need of today and will be the culture of tomorrow. It is the science of right living and is intended to be incorporated in daily life as it works on all aspects of a person’s being – physical, vital, mental, intellectual and spiritual. Yoga is the union of the individual consciousness with universal consciousness and a means of balancing the body, the mind and the spirit.

Yoga accomplishes all this through the practice of Asanas, Pranayama, Mudras, bandh, Shatkarma and meditation. There are many branches of Yoga. Each individual must find the one most suited to his/her particular needs.

Physical and mental therapy is one of Yoga’s most significant achievements. “The fact that it works on the holistic principles of harmony and unification makes it very powerful. Due to the hectic lifestyle of the 21st century, people generally are prone to anxiety and stress. This tends to cause an imbalance in the endocrine system as well as the nervous system, which directly influences all the other systems in the body. Yoga has succeeded as an alternative form of therapy in diseases such as asthma, diabetes, blood pressure, arthritis, digestive disorders and other ailments of chronic nature. It works where modern science fails.

The secret of health is to know how to deal with one’s body and mind. The doctor treats us merely at the physical level. However, even modern science agrees that most of the diseases have their root cause in the mind. Yogic techniques such as meditation and deep relaxation allow the mind to relax and calm down, thus removes the root cause of many diseases. When a doctor treats these patients through pills or injections, he merely treats the symptom, not the cause. For complete eradication of these diseases, one needs to eliminate the root cause of it, which may include defilement such as attachment, anger, craving, aversion, stress, anxiety and such. Defilement of the mind disturbs our breathing, endocrine function and many other bodily functions. The practice of Pranayama allows us to breathe properly in slow, rhythmic pattern, using the complete capacity of the lungs. Thus by calming down the speed of our breath, we calm down our mind and allow it to bring the endocrine functions, the nervous system and the defilement of the mind under control. Yogic purification techniques are additional powerful means of systematically eradicating diseases from our body by removing the toxins that cause these diseases.