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In the past episodes we saw how yoga helps in minimizing the thought-wars that generally give rise to stress. But mere stress reduction is not the ultimate goal of Yoga.In the previous episode we also saw why it is necessary to minimize the thoughts completely to march towards a completely tranquil mind – an entry point to the final goal.We talked about focusing the mind on specific targets through a process called Dharana – the 6th step of Yoga. Dharana is the precursor to meditation or Dhyana that takes us to the ultimate goal of Yoga.Before we dive deeply into Dhyana, let us look at some interesting aspects of Dhyana or meditation in this episode.

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In the past episodes we saw how yoga helps in minimizing stress. Lesser stress means better health. Most people turn to Yoga with that goal. But Yoga is not really about stress reduction, though that is one of its byproducts. There are far more interesting things that Yoga can achieve. It takes us to an altogether new dimension of our existence far beyond mundane. That is achieved by the advanced steps of Yoga that we are going to discuss in this as well as subsequent episodes.

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Unless you are a novice who is just introduced to Yoga, you probably have noticed that the effectiveness of Yoga practice gradually tapers off over a period of time. It is no longer as effective as it once used to be. Why does that happen?

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 For most of us asana or body posture is purely a physical thing – stretching, contracting and balancing the body in a specific way. So, you must be wondering what has neuroscience got to do with it! But you may be surprised that even this seemingly physical ‘thing’ has underlying neurological basis! That is what I am going to discuss in this episode.

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 In this episode, we will briefly discuss the neuroscience behind many techniques that result in a sharply focused mind – or ‘Ekaagra Citta as Patanjali calls it. Along with the well-known Pranayama of Patanjali, I will touch upon the so called ‘Mindfulness’ techniques as well.

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 In this episode, we will briefly discuss the neuroscience behind a very important step of Patanjali Yoga namely Pratyahara. This is an in between stage of ‘mundane’ and ‘spiritual’ steps of Yoga.

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        The topic of this episode is a strange case where a young girl declares herself to be God. It may sound crazy or height of arrogance, and even blasphemous, in some of the majority religions

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‘creation hymns’ of the ancient Indian Vedas. But we will be

looking at this hymn from a slightly different point of view.

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Big bang theory is the most widely accepted scientific theory about

how our universe emerged 13.7 billion years ago. Though there is not

much of empirical evidence about this theory yet, except for

mathematical derivations, it is most likely to be true. This theory

was propounded in the late 1940s and refined in the past few decades.

But what is amazing is that there are seemingly similar descriptions

of the origins of the universe, in the more than 5000-year-old Vedas.

– the most ancient scriptures of India. In this talk, I will

briefly touch upon one such description.

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 Almost all the meditation practices that are propagated today are

based on the idea of Kundalini and associated Chakras.

The concept of Kundalini is so popular that one has to think twice

before calling it as a myth 😉 It can be viewed as blasphemous!

I had discussed earlier how one of the well-known Gurus of our times,

namely Swami Dayananda Saraswati, brushes aside Kundalini based

meditation as “not meditation”.

Let me look at this practice a bit more in depth before sharing the

views of some of the well-known Yogis of our times, on this idea.