The Yogis

Anyone here know a lot about them? Did they believe in the caste system? Is Yoga the very first exercise program and foundation of martial arts? Did the Aryan come from the Himmalayas and was part of the Yogis? Did the Brahmans practice Yoga?

try this link

Yoga

Hi, thanks.
I started Yoga because I was sore from the gym about a year ago. It has cured my asthma, allergies and pains in my back and now it is the only workout I do. I lost a lot of wait and have a ton more energy.

I do the real Yoga with all the meditiations. It is very relazful and I try to encompass into everything I do, from opening a door, to cooking. Everything is now a yoga exercise.

Originally posted by RedWhiteandBlood
Anyone here know a lot about them?

They come from Jellystone Park and like picnic baskets. One of them became a famous baseball player.

Originally posted by RedWhiteandBlood
Hi, thanks.
I started Yoga because I was sore from the gym about a year ago. It has cured my asthma, allergies and pains in my back and now it is the only workout I do. I lost a lot of wait and have a ton more energy.

I do the real Yoga with all the meditiations. It is very relazful and I try to encompass into everything I do, from opening a door, to cooking. Everything is now a yoga exercise.

Now you are learning!

In Eternal Service,
Swami Vajra

Originally posted by dave_54

Originally posted by RedWhiteandBlood
Anyone here know a lot about them?

They come from Jellystone Park and like picnic baskets. One of them became a famous baseball player.

LMAO, that cracked me up.

Originally posted by RedWhiteandBlood
Anyone here know a lot about them?

Yup

Did they believe in the caste system?

No truly enlightened being belives in such things, with the exception of the original intent of the caste system only referring to the various natural tendencies and talents of people.

Not intended to be a lineage thing, caste is based on personal factors, not heredity.

Is Yoga the very first exercise program and foundation of martial arts?

I do not know what the first systemized excercise program was, so, cannot answer that.

There are many complimentary practices within the yoga science, from simple physical postures to breathing excercises, to meditative practices that give the siddhis, or powers, spoken of in the ancient texts....if you have never seen pics of some of these powers being displayed I can assist in that. Simply click here to see demonstration of the levitation ability by Yogi Naruse aka Akasha Giri www.naruse-yoga.com...

Bodhidharma, a yogi from South India, went to Shao lin Temple in China, by instruction of his Guru, after the passing of his Guru and taught them the 18 Lohan Hands form to combat physical atrophy they suffered from too much meditation and not enuff excercise. This grew and changed and became what we now think of as Kung Fu, thereby leading to the development of other systems in Asia.

Bodhidharma, was also the originator of Ch'an, which when the teachings moved to Japan, became known as Zen. The fundamentals involved in meditation are the same, just different strokes for different folks. But, yes, all this came from India.

Did the Brahmans practice Yoga?

You mean, Brahmins. Those of the priestly and ruling caste. Some did, some didn't, some were scholars, some were Knowers.

I am an Ordained Swami of the Advaita Ishvaravada Agami Tradition, we call our practice Brahman-Atman Yoga. It is also known as Raja Yoga, Kriya Yoga, etc. Names, as with so many things, merely serve to maintain separation in a path that is all about Unity. If I may be of any further service, do not hesitate to ask.

Forgive me if this comes out looking funny, still learning how to use this system.

In Eternal Service,
Swami Vajra



[edit on 15-6-2005 by Swami Vajra]

Originally posted by dave_54

Originally posted by RedWhiteandBlood
Anyone here know a lot about them?

They come from Jellystone Park and like picnic baskets. One of them became a famous baseball player.

Lotta zen in Yogi Berra. You might want to try Satchel Paige, too.

Satchel Paige

Yogi

Sorry...I COULDN'T RESIST!!

Couldn't you have posted Cindy Bear?

I've been practising Yoga seriously for about 15 years. When I started I had a decent job, a car, and a stable home life. Within one year I had lost the job. The car to follow.

My home life became more strained. I've had a couple of serious break downs over the years that were yoga related. During the most serious of these I was diagnosised as a paranoid schizophrenic, and put on respiradone. That was 6 years ago, and my bowels still haven't recovered.

I haven't worked since. I've lost my drivers lisence. I look back on yoga as the worst mistake I've ever made. I intend to stop, but it's as if I'm compelled to practise by 'external compulsion'. With thinking like that you can see how they thought I was paranoid. Well I wouldn't be the 1st one to think he was being 'remote controlled' by hidden teachers.

If I had it to do over again, I'd have skipped the yoga, and smoked, drank, and done drugs. or I'll tell you what I now wish that some one had told me, "Forget the mumbo jumbo, and go to church!"

Do the research, on the web, and you'll find the incidents of yoga and it's relation to mental illness.

[edit on 19-6-2005 by GrandCourtJester]

"Jesus did not come into the world to found a Church but to proclaim a Kingdom - the two being by no means the same thing."

If Jesus chose Peter to be the rock on which his church was to be founded, thereby in effect nominating him to be the first of a long line of his Vicars on earth, there have been many mundane intruders into this spiritual domain, from the Emperor Constantine onwards. To those who like myself, rightly or wrongly, have become convinced that what is called 'Western civilization' is irretrievably over, and that another Dark Age is upon us, this seeming collapse of the Church is desolating. We bemoan the passing of a liturgy in which we never participated, of high virtues which we never practiced, of an obedience we never accorded and an orthodoxy we never accepted and often ridiculed.

Yet even if it is true that, despite the assurance given to Peter, the gates of Hell have prevailed, or at any rate are now swinging on ecumenical hinges, that is only a lost battle. The war goes on; and suddenly, in the most unlikely theater of all, a Solzhenitsyn raises his voice, while in the dismal slums of Calcutta a Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity go about Jesus' work of love with incomparable dedication. When I think of them, as I have seen them at their work and at their devotions, I want to put away all the books, tear up all the scribbled notes. There are no more doubts or dilemmas; everything is perfectly clear. What commentary or exposition, however, eloquent, lucid, perceptive, inspired even, can equal in eludication and illumination the effect of these dedicated lives? What mind has conceived a discourse, or tongue spoken it, which conveys even to a minute degree the light they shine before men?

I was hungry, and you gave me meat.
I was thirsty, and you gave me drink.
I was a stranger, and you took me in, and I was naked and you clothed me.
I was sick, and you visited me.
I was in prison, and you came unto me.

The words (of Jesus) come alive, as no study or meditation could possibly make them, in the fulfillment in the most literal sense of Jesus' behest to see in the suffering face of humanity his suffering face, and in their broken bodies, his. The religion Jesus gave the world is an experience, not a body of ideas or principles. It is in being lived that it lives, as it is in loving that the love which it discloses at the heart of all creation becomes manifest. It belongs to the world of a Cervantes rather than that of a Wittgen-stein; to Rabelais and Tolstoy rather than to Bultmann and Barth. It is for fools like me, the poor of this world, rather than for the king.


Thinking of Jesus, I suddenly understand that I know nothing...
and for some reason begin to laugh hilariously, which brings me to the realization that I understand everything I need to understand. So, in the face of a Mother Teresa I trace the very geography of Jesus' Kingdom; all the contours and valleys and waterways. I need no other map. In the light of such a faith as hers, the troubles of the Church, its liturgical squabbles and contending theologies and Vatican Councils drowsing through interminable sessions, seem of little account. Once when I was complaining about Church dignitaries and their attitudes, Mother Teresa drily pointed out that, of the twelve disciples, hand-picked by Jesus himself, one turned out to be a crook and the rest ran away. How, she asked, can we expect mere popes and bishops to do better? How indeed?

And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

Jesus particularly charged his disciples that they should tell no man he was . . . the Christ. He knew, of course, that if his Messianic role were to be bruited abroad the danger would arise of his becoming the focus of some sort of insurrection, which would falsify the whole purpose of his ministry. Being an attractive, forceful and persuasive speaker and teacher, with a strong personality, once he was seen as the Messiah, and known to have accepted that title, the violence anticipated in many of the Messianic prophecies might easily erupt about his head. To abate any possible ardor in this direction among the disciples, he broke it to them that he would shortly go to Jerusalem, and that there he would suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Peter was outraged, and protested strongly; if Jesus was indeed the Messiah, as now they all accepted, they looked for him to be victorious, not defeated, and expected to share in his triumph.

Be it far from thee Lord; this shall not be done unto thee, Peter insisted.

This time Jesus rebuked him: Get behind me, you Satan: you are an offense to me: for you do not savor the things of God, but those that be of men!

It effectively shut him up.

The danger that Jesus, once generally accepted as the Messiah, would be pushed into at any rate seeming to lead a rebellion, was a very real one. According to the Fourth Gospel, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes the excitement of the crowd was so great, and their conviction so strong that Jesus was indeed the prophet whose imminent coming into the world had been prophesied and was not eagerly awaited, that Jesus feared he might be taken by force and proclaimed a king. To avoid anything of the kind, he departed again into a mountain, himself alone.

'It is the simple historical fact', Professor William Barclay writes, 'that in the thirty years from 67 to 37 BC before the emergence of Herod the Great, no fewer than one hundred and fifty thousand men perished in Palestine in revolutionary uprisings. There was no more explosive and inflammable country in the world than Palestine. If Jesus had publicly claimed to be Messiah, nothing could have stopped a useless flood tide of slaughter.' He goes on to point out that before he could openly claim the Messiahship, he had to show it to the world in a quite new light, with a quite new significance; as a Messiahship whose only power was sacrificial love. In other words, he was indubitably the Messiah, but one 'whose reign was in the hearts of men, a Messiah who reigned from a Cross'. Professor Barclay, along with the late Dr. C. H. Dodd, provides the unfamiliar traveler across the deserts and jungles of Biblical criticism with one of his few sure, steady and infinitely reassuring beacons to guide him on his way.

Peter is only one of the disciples whose character emerges clearly and strongly; the others are somewhat dim figures who in the Gospel narratives do and say little that distinguishes them from one another. This is the case even with John, the disciples Jesus is said to have loved with a special tenderness, and to whom he handed over the care of his mother as he was dying. Peter, on the other hand, is quite definitely a person - impetuous, mercurial, easily stirred to passionate protestations of devotion and loyalty, and equally prone to lose heart in face of difficulties, and to fall down on his undertakings when the test came. Just because of the clearer delineation of his character, he is always the easiest to pick out in group paintings of the disciples; for instance, in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. At the same time, he is sympathetically portrayed, and there is, indeed, something irresistible about him even when he is at his worst; as in his tragic threefold denial of Jesus while Jesus was being examined by Caiaphas, the High Priest, and his father-in-law, Annas - a sinister figure who had managed, in a manner any contemporary political boss like Mayor Daley of Chicago might envy, after he had been High Priest himself for a number of years, to get the job for five of his sons in succession, as well as for his son-in-law Caiaphas. Peter stayed in the ante-room, and was warming his hands by a coal fire there when the first question was put to him by a maidservant guarding the door: Art thou also one of this man's disciples? His curt answer was I am not. A certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him, and said, This man was also with him. And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not.

How vivid the scene is! -- the flames of the lately lit fire illumining the faces of those silently gathered round it; within, the farcical interrogation going on, with occasional words heard, and the sound of Jesus being struck by one of the officers with the palm of his hand. All present must have been conscious that something momentous was happening. Then came the second question, from one of the people gathered with Peter round the fire: Art not thou also one of his disciples? Again the denial, this time accompanied with shouts and curses; the resort of all of us when we succumb to cowardice and panic. Now the third and last question, from one of the High Priest's servants who had noticed Peter's Galilean accent, and thought he recognized him as having been in the Garden of Gethsemane with Jesus when he was taken: Art not thou also one of his disciples? No, he was not, Peter insisted, more vehemently than ever, pouring out a strong stream of abuse, curses and obscenities. Fishermen, like bargees, always know how to curse. At this point the dawn broke and the cock crowed, and Peter remembered how the evening before Jesus had prophesied that before the cock crowed he would have denied him thrice. So he went away and wept bitterly.

For Peter there was unforeseen comfort to come. After the Resurrection Jesus three times asked him if he loved him, thus balancing the three times Peter had denied him; and a chastened Peter each time answered less confidently than had been his way, saying that Jesus, who knew all things, must know that he loved him. To intimate his forgiveness of Peter and renewed faith in him, Jesus entrusted him with one of his most deeply felt commands: Feed my sheep! This, too, Jesus repeated three times to emphasize its urgency.

Another incident described in the Gospels, which Jesus particularly asked the three disciples who were present at it not to mention to anyone, at least until after his death and Resurrection, was what is called 'the Transfiguration'. The three disciples were Peter, James and John, and the incident occurred some eight days after the conversation at Caesarea Philippi. They had accompanied Jesus up into a high mountain; like all mystics, he needed from time to time to withdraw from the world, as he had into the wilderness after his baptism by John the Baptist. A high mountain, especially at dawn, offers a greater sense of isolation than even the desert of the high seas, and so is a favorite place for such withdrawals. On this occasion, Jesus became so rapt that he was momentarily carried away into heavenly regions where he might commune more closely with God. Hearing him speaking as though with some unseen presence, and seeing his face shining with ecstasy, and even his clothes glistening and luminous, the three disciples were overcome with awe, so that they fell on their faces and were afraid. They had the impression that Jesus was conversing with Moses and Elijah, and Peter made the endearingly ludicrous suggestion that, in order to protract so remarkable a situation, he might construct three tabernacles for Jesus and the two prophets. At this point, we are told, a bright cloud overshadowed them all, and they seemed to hear a voice out of the cloud, like the one at Jesus's baptism, acknowledging him as God's beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, but on this occasion adding: Hear ye him! It was, after all, the essential requirement - to hear and heed what he had to say. It is so still.

Such transports as the Transfiguration are common enough among mystics, and there are numerous detailed descriptions of them, all of which bear a close resemblance to one another. This strongly suggests that the experience itself is related to some permanent, continuing element in human life which in a mystical state is clearly perceived, but only vaguely and occasionally glimpsed amidst the ordinary preoccupations of earthly living. As the existence of hunger presupposes the existence of bread, and the existence of a fiddle that of music, so the longing for God and awareness of God which characterizes all these mystical experiences presupposes His existence. How precious such experiences are! How one longs for their recurrence! And how mysteriously they come and go! Suddenly, everything seems clearly related to everything else; the harmony perfect, then as suddenly lost. The joy in the consciousness of this harmony is the greatest ever vouchsafed to us in this world, as the sense of loss when it passes is the great desolation.

At the Transfiguration, when the glory was upon Jesus, the luminosity was too much for the three disciples with him, and they had to shut their eyes. Still, they had seen and heard, and to that extent participated. Coming down from the mountain when it was all over, the reaction will have set in. I imagine them then, their footsteps laggardly, and their talk listless, looking closely at Jesus' familiar face and movements, and wondering whether it had really happened - that light, those voices, the words spoken from on high. Experiencing these brief ecstasies, so long watched and waited for, and passing so quickly, is like sitting through a dull concert because at some point there will be a movement, or maybe just a few chords, so sublime that the roof and the walls of the concert-hall will dissolved, the orchestra and their instruments and the prancing conductor with his baton disappear, leaving one alone in a universe overflowing with the music of life itself, its generality and its particularity merged into a oneness, eternal breakers beating against the shores of Time. Then back to the concert-hall, the violins and the cellos, the drums and the trumpets and the whistling flutes; mortality-s familiar orchestration. Stretching a 'crumme of dust from heav'n to hell':
Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best. As the old English poet, George Herbert saw it:

Stretch or contract me, thy poore debtor:
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.


In Augustine's Confessions the experience is wonderfully described.
It happened when he was at Ostia with his mother, Monica, after his conversion. They were on their way back to Africa; she triumphant, and soon to die, he full of peace and joy, with his long life's work before him. As they leaned from a window overlooking the courtyard of the house in which they were staying, their conversation turned on what the eternal life of the saints would be like, 'that life which no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no human heart conceived', and they concluded that no bodily pleasure, however delectable and lustrous in earthly terms, was worthy of comparison, or even mention, beside the happiness of the life of the saints. As they talked on, their thoughts reached higher and higher; from 'the whole compass of material things in their various degrees, up to the heavens themselves, from which the sun and the moon and the stars shine down upon the earth'. Then higher still, full of the wonder of all creation, until they reached their own souls; pressing on even beyond them, towards the eternal Wisdom which belongs neither to the past nor the future, but simply is:

And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it. Then with a sigh leaving our spiritual harvest bound to it, we returned to the sound of our own speech, in which each word has a beginning and an ending - far, far different from your Word, our Lord, who abides in himself for ever, yet never grows old and gives new life to all things.

The descent to words - those clumsy and inflexible bricks - is like trying to play the Missa Solemnis on a mouth-organ, or to dance the Mazurka with no legs. A lifetime at the task but serves to make it seem the more impossible; truth in words at best attaining only meaning, beauty only elegance, and strength no more than shock. A daddy-long-legs struggling to climb out of a bath, or a mole diligently throwing up his heap of useless earth - so the artificer of words. Every spiritual harvest has, like Augustine's and Monica's, to be left behind, ungarnered; there is always the desolating return to the sound of words which begin and end when what they have to say has neither ending nor beginning. Happy the dumb who cannot be mocked by what they say; the illiterates who cannot be cheated by what they read, or cheat others with what they write!

Jesus spoke, but he also healed. The two went together; they were the equipoise between loving God and loving one's neighbor - the two duties into which Jesus resolved all that the Law laid down and the prophets had proclaimed. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane he healed, restoring the man's ear that Peter had impulsively hacked off with his sword. For that matter, even on the Cross he offered healing words to the penitent thief crucified beside him, making a rendezvous with him in paradise. Jesus never for one moment forgot our human need for bodies and minds in working order; for eyes that truly see and ears that truly hear. His compassion for the maimed, whether they were physically, mentally or spiritually disabled, was fathomless. More often than not, it was his healing powers which drew crowds to him. When it was known that he would be in a particular place they poured in from every direction, sometimes coming long distances - the blind groping their way, the halt and the lame and the inform stumbling along as best they might, some carried on stretchers and litters; then the lepers, shunned by the others, with stumps for arms and lost noses and hobbling toeless feet. Such macabre gatherings assemble at festivals in India, chattering and pleading in the expectation of alms or miracles or both.

At Lourdes, too, bowing their heads, abating their twitchings, holding out their hands, if they have any, as the Blessed Sacrament approaches, they recall his healing words:

Daughter, they faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

The sick who crowded Jesus wanted...
of course, to get near him, if possible to touch or be touched; in any case to catch his particular attention. There was, for instance, the woman with a long-standing issue of blood who managed to get close behind him and reached out her hand to his clothing, calculating: If I may touch his clothes, I shall be whole. It worked; straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed. Jesus at once knew something had happened; he was conscious of power going out of him, and asked who had touched his garments. In view of the crush of people, the disciples considered this rather a ridiculous question, but the woman herself, fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. Whereupon Jesus told her: Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague, which I am sure she did, never forgetting till the end of her days the deliverance that had come to her; possibly boring people by talking constantly about it. Not that issue of blood again!

Reductio ad absurdum is built by God into our lives and all our history.
The first requirement in Jesus' miraculous cures - underlined in the particular case of the woman with an issue of blood precisely because she had no other contact with him than just to touch his clothing - was faith on the part of the recipient that Jesus could effect a cure. Any doubt on this point ruled out all possibility of one. Good doctors always say that they don't and can't cure their patients, but only provide the circumstances for them to cure themselves. It is the same with miracles; an age that believes in miracles is likely to witness them, and an age like ours which dismisses the possibility, correspondingly unlikely. We get, not only the government, but the miracles we deserve. Although the woman with an issue of blood made no appeal to Jesus, established no contact with him, yet just touching his clothing sufficed to cure her. Jesus, for his part, was at once conscious that thereby something had been taken from him. In other words, just as the person cured had to believe in the possibility of a cure, so the curer, in effecting one, had to give of himself, of his love, of his vitality; as it might be, of his heart's blood. Walking with Mother Teresa among her lepers, it was obvious to me that her mere presence soothed and revived them. Just by being with them she gave them life and hope. Afterwards I could see that she was drained of life herself. She never admits that she is tired, or that what she has to give can be used up; but at times a greyness comes into her face, and her eyes momentarily go out like a lamp when there is no more oil. Is it surprising that, confronted with the task of reviving Lazarus, Jesus groaned aloud at the prospect of so spending himself?

In the early days of blood-transfusion, before the use of plasma, the donor was connected visibly to the recipient by a glass tube. Then the doctor would pump, so that the donor actually saw the blood being drawn out and pumped into another body, producing almost instantaneous revival; color and expression and shape coming back into a grey, lost face. If the face was familiar - often pored over; creased and crumpled, like a much-used map - then the experience was ecstatic, almost sensual in its intensity. Once, in this situation, I heard myself shouting out to the pathologist operating the transfusion to keep at it, and draw blood lavishly without any concern about the available supply. If, however, it was the face of a stranger - in the particular case I am thinking of, a man in his middle fifties, with a sparse red beard growing spikily out of wan cheeks and chin - curiously enough the experience was in some ways more harrowing. There was something infinitely moving and tender in thus disgorging blood for a nebulous figure, never seen before, never to be seen again. Just a man, any man, ashen-lipped, with glazed eyes and bad breath. Someone who would pass for being totally insignificant, of a kind encountered in railway compartments, whose remarks, if he made any, were bound to be banal, but for whom none the less I was giving my blood, and in the process feeling for him an overwhelming concern and love. If I had known him at all, or wanted to know him, detected in him some particular charm or grace, seen some specific reason why the protraction of his life was desirable - he would write books, make discoveries, he had children to support and work to finish - our tubular connection and blood-sharing would have been less uplifting. The Unknown Soldier interred in Westminster Abbey or under the Arc de Triomphe; the Unknown Recipient to whom blood is dispensed, in hospitals and at altar rails.

Jesus' healing may be compared, though of course on an immeasurably higher spiritual level, with this giving of blood to a stranger. With certain particular exceptions like the raising of Lazarus, the people he healed were unknown to him. It might be two blind men shouting after him to have their sight restored, or a fellow worshipper in a synagogue who happened to have a withered arm, or some poor, possessed soul yelling and grinding his teeth, or an infirm man who had come year after year to a sheep-market pool in Jerusalem where it was said an angel from time to time troubled the waters, and that whoever bathed in them first after the troubling would be healed of whatever disease he might have - but this poor man had no one to help him down to the pool, so that year after year he missed his chance. These were cases which for one reason or another attracted Jesus' attention, so that the two blind men got back their sight, the withered arm was held out and healed even though it was the Sabbath, the poor possessed soul became sane, and the infirm man by the pool was instructed to rise, take up his bed and walk, which he duly did, also on the Sabbath. On other occasions when the sick gathered, we are simply told in the Gospels that he healed them, without specifying how many or what their ailments were.

Sometimes Jesus' healing involved touching the afflicted parts, or some simple action like using his spittle to make mud which he put on a blind man's sightless eyes to bring back their sight. There was, of course, no question of treatment in the medical sense, still less of drugs or medicine. His commonest, indeed, his almost invariable, procedure was to tell those who were to be cured that their sins were forgiven them; by thus relieving them of their moral infirmities they were automatically relieved of their physical ones. This was especially infuriating to the legalistic Scribes; they considered it amounted to blasphemously making himself equal with God, who alone was competent to forgive sins. Jesus brushed their objections aside with: For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? In any case the man in question, who was sick of the palsy and lying in a bed, did arise and walk, thereby proving Jesus' point. Jesus likewise brushed aside the legalistic objection of the Scribes to healing on the Sabbath. Would they not, any one of them, go after one of their cattle that had fallen into a ditch on the Sabbath? Of course they would! How much more, then, was it permissible on the Sabbath, as on any other day, to save a fellow human being who had fallen into sickness or demon-possession.

Then touched he their eyes,
saying, According to your faith
be it unto you. And their eyes
were opened.

Muggeridge




[edit on 22-6-2005 by GrandCourtJester]

Originally posted by GrandCourtJester
I've been practising Yoga seriously for about 15 years. When I started I had a decent job, a car, and a stable home life. Within one year I had lost the job. The car to follow.

My home life became more strained. I've had a couple of serious break downs over the years that were yoga related. During the most serious of these I was diagnosised as a paranoid schizophrenic, and put on respiradone. That was 6 years ago, and my bowels still haven't recovered.

I haven't worked since. I've lost my drivers lisence. I look back on yoga as the worst mistake I've ever made. I intend to stop, but it's as if I'm compelled to practise by 'external compulsion'. With thinking like that you can see how they thought I was paranoid. Well I wouldn't be the 1st one to think he was being 'remote controlled' by hidden teachers.

If I had it to do over again, I'd have skipped the yoga, and smoked, drank, and done drugs. or I'll tell you what I now wish that some one had told me, "Forget the mumbo jumbo, and go to church!"

Do the research, on the web, and you'll find the incidents of yoga and it's relation to mental illness.

[edit on 19-6-2005 by GrandCourtJester]

Whoever wrote this mustve been born demented. Yoga or no yoga this guy has always had a problem

That arguement is Ad Hominem. You are certianly entitled to your opinions.

[edit on 30-6-2005 by GrandCourtJester]

I don't suppose your problems were due to your being schizophrenic?

Or are you going to link yoga to schizophrenia?

I fully sympathise with the struggles you've had; I just fear we're only getting half the story, you know?

(It might help to know which form of yoga you practised; was it Sahaja Yoga, for example, which is a movement already under "cult-watch" status in many areas?)

[edit on 30-6-2005 by Tinkleflower]

You'd be surprised at the number of people who develop schizophrenia after practising. As I say, given the time to do over, I would've avoided yoga.

Yoga has become a "foi de jour", as the french say. It's a way of people not being what they were brought up to be. An attempt to exert free will through the inevitable rebillion. So when we abound one set of answers, we seek to replace them with a new set. That's why some of the pro yoga posters seem 'defensive', or even 'hostile', to me. I've questioned their belief system, their 'new orthodoxy'.

If their responses seem dogmatic - "It can't be yoga, so it must be you", "I guess some one has to be to blame, but the yoga didn't help", - it is because yoga is a dogma. Every dogma has it's day, but while dogma spells "am god", it also spells "go mad"!


[edit on 30-6-2005 by GrandCourtJester]

Originally posted by GrandCourtJester
You'd be surprised at the number of people who develop schizophrenia after practising. As I say, given the time to do over, I would've avoided yoga.

You're right, I would be - that's why I'm asking if you had any other evidence of this other than your own anecdotes

Again, which form of yoga were you practising?

[edit on 30-6-2005 by Tinkleflower]

Hatha with breathing and mantra. I've read of a number of cases, online, and in text cases. I've known a few people to who lost it after beginning serious practise.

But as I say, people get protective over their belief systems. This is something I've encountered with yoga types before. "We're more broad minded", until you question a core believe, and then they come out swinging! Behaviour they were critical of in the "more orthodox".

May I ask if you wouldn't mind sharing these cases?

Online sadly doesn't offer much in terms of proof; people lie, exaggerate and can innocently suffer from misconceptions about their own welfare, and sadly do so with alarming frequency.

Text cases though, are often different - I'd love to read about those, as I'm not finding anything using my usual sources.

Hatha Yoga isn't generally deemed unsafe - the practice focuses on breathing and meditation along with physical exercise, and does not (at least, it should not) include religious indoctrination or other recognised "brainwashing" methods; on the other hand, Swami Satchidananda's controversies didn't help his groups much, and there have been reports on various Cult Watch sites relating to Sahaja Yoga about mind-washing and abuse.

I'm not sure there is a "yoga type" - for many, it's nothing more than a form of physical and spiritual exercise. To others, yes, it can become more....but it's probably ill-advised to lump all practitioners together.

I'm genuinely curious as to the alleged link between schizophrenia and yoga; it might also be prudent to consider other things going on at the time too, in terms of both physical and psychological stressors.

As an Ordained Swami (teacher) of the Advaita Ishavaravada Agami Tradition, PIOUS Order, I can tell you that when ones consciousness begins to expand and other realms of reality are experienced without the guidance of a qualified teacher, they can be very upsetting.

Practices designed to raise the kundalini, without proper foundation practices have been known to take people into madness. That is one of the problems with those who have not walked the path themselves exposing others to dangerous practices, or with trying things one reads about without the proper guidance and preparatory practices.

I have not heard of anyone having such problems from basic hatha asanas, pranayamas and meditations. They simply aren't that powerful. But, I would not say it cannot happen. I would suspect either your problem was latent within you before beginning practice or you simply didn't have a knowledgeable guide to help you through these things. It isn't the practice that is the problem, it is only your reaction to what comes with it.

If I may be of any help, I am most happy to do so. I do not want your money or your mind as a slave. I would only offer to help you understand what is happening. I may have some useful recommendations for you.

Feel free to email me if you would like some assistance.

[email protected]

In Eternal Service,
Swami Vajra