Yoga/ Pranayama

🧘‍♀️Yoga by Chance

A life-changing exercise combining physical postures and breathing techniques!

Rebecca Allen 🚵‍♀️

Published in

Leaders International 🌎

5 min readJun 23, 2024

“Yoga takes you into the present moment. The only place where life exists.” — Patanjali

I have always loved yoga. It is such a majestic and divine form of exercise. I watched thousands of videos and pictures of people doing yoga and admired them on the other side of my laptop’s screen.

In my mind, I saw myself doing yoga every day. I even imagined performing the hardest yoga poses like Shirshasana(the head stand pose). It is a yoga pose that I loved and enjoyed doing (in my mind).

But somehow, I was not successful in taking the physical step onto the yoga mat. I wonder why there was so much resistance on the physical level that held me back for so long!

Years of watching something that I really appreciated and loved was not able to get me to move my stiff body physically.

This was happening to me until, luckily and coincidentally, I stumbled upon watching a middle-aged person performing yoga with so much zeal, zest, and great enthusiasm.

That was it!
For the first time, I felt and really felt the love of yoga even increase so much to leave no other room for that so-called resistance in my mind that was stopping my body from performing such wonderful yoga poses.

I can’t thank this Yoga guru enough. His name is Swami Ramdev!

What Did Swami Ramdev Do that Distinguished him from all Others?

All the other yogis I have been watching for so long also did yoga, talked about yoga and even taught yoga. But, unlike all other yoga performers and teachers, this man was absolutely different.

I found him a living example of what he was preaching.

Swami Ramdev would consistently explain the scientific and systematic reasons behind each yoga pose that he performed. I realized that he had a wealth of knowledge about every single yoga pose.

Thanks to him, not only did I start feeling convinced by his great reasoning about trying yoga asanas, but he also introduced me to even more in yoga.

Swami Ramdev even dug yoga further. He showed me the crown of yoga — The Pranayama. According to some authentic sources, he became famous due to making this branch of yoga epidamically performed in his country.

The Pranayama

Pranayama is the set of all the ancient breathing exercises Swami Ramdev calls far more beneficial than yoga poses.
Swami Ramdev’s reasoning is so true that our breath is the only force that can reach even the cellular level of our body. Whereas yoga asanas or postures have great benefits, their benefits are limited to the structural and tissue level.
He talks for hours about every asana and pranayama, inspiring people to perform them regularly and religiously.

Who is Swami Ramdev?

As far as one can remember, Baba Ramdev suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Maybe from the heavens!

Nevertheless, I came to know that:

Baba Ramdev is the first Indian who literally made the Indian nation realize the importance of this ancient yogic art of living — Pranayama, which they had forgotten long ago.
He is the first Indian who had the honour of bringing tens of thousands of Indian crowds to the open grounds in the very early morning to perform yoga by igniting the love and understanding of the miraculous benefits of yoga and pranayama.
Children, youth, old ones, men, women, rich and poor__ you will see everyone doing the yoga poses with him and dancing to the melodious calling of this yogic pied piper.

And I am one of them!

I literally feel like calling him the Pied Piper of the Yogic World.

He is a charismatic yoga teacher with a 110% understanding of what he is teaching.

And the best part is, he teaches yoga mostly free of cost. He allows all age groups to join him to perform yoga.

He cares nothing about who his audience is___ whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, or Christian. He sees everyone with the same lens of compassion and love.

With his melodious and enchanting voice, Swami Ramdev raised such a magical tune of awareness that every single Indian and thousands of others in many countries got up and raised their consciousness to understand and commit to performing yoga each day regularly and consistently.

Although I am not an Indian, I am also one out of those millions in the crowd who stepped out of their comfort zones.

I literally fell in love with yoga this time, by happily doing yoga in the early morning with the divine mentorship of Swami Ramdev, across the Laptop screen.

I thank Swami Ramdev for teaching me to fall in love with yoga over and over again. And I wish him a long, happiest, healthiest, and most fulfilling life full of blessings ahead. Amen.

Yoga Saturas (Rules)

1-Yamas (ethics)
2-Niyamas (virtuous behaviors)
3-Asana (postures)
4-Pranayama (breath)
5-Pratyahara (awareness)
6-Dhahran (concentration)
7-Dhyana (reflection)
8-Samadhi (union)

Take away some Inspiration!

“Your body exists in the past and your mind exists in the future. In yoga, they come together in the present.” ― B.K.S.Iyengar
“Yoga is the fountain of youth. You’re only as young as your spine is flexible.” — Bob Harper
“Yoga is a method to come to a nondreaming mind. Yoga is the science to be in the here and now.” ― Osho
“Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.” — B.K.S. Iyengar
“You may not be able to control the whole world, but you may learn to control your inner world through yoga.” — Debasish Mridha