Shot By Brock

Yoga. Not really a sport, not really a form of exercise, more just a series of contortions and stretches, some of which look easy and some of which look really quite painful. It’s fair to say, I’ve never really got it. But for many it’s essential. And testament to this is the number of people who regularly practice it. According to the Economic Times of India there are more than 300 million yogis who have adopted it as part of their lifestyle, 50 percent of whom live in India, and 37 million in the United States alone. Not bad for a bit of stretching. So why? What is it that makes it so alluring? Patanjali, who compiled the definitive text on Yoga – The Yoga Sutras – sometime between 500 BCE and 400 AD (experts can’t seem to agree when exactly the great book was written) is quoted as saying: “Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the