Yoga for crisis management

The tribe of yoga lovers is on the rise. Morning sessions at my home before I leave for my office are warmed up with intensive yoga. A number of my students are my neighbours who must work long hours at their offices glued to their laptop screens. Having been initiated into yoga by me sometime back, a majority of them are regular with it. We all share our notes on our experience with the discipline. A few who reported back pain, spondylitis and cervical have shown steady improvement in their conditions. The first ones to report improvement were those who suffered respiratory disorders, sinusitis being the most common.The last ones have always been those who had had skin or bone disorders.

What is causing all my friends on job the maximum anxiety is their inability to cope up with the economic recession blues. "I have been losing 30% of my salary every month after the management at my company introduced harsh performance parameters," shared Arun. Anisha feels she could be sacked anytime as the layoffs in her company are maximum in the top wrung. She is a senior manager. A few have been laid off, while others think they will be. 


Our capacity to face a crisis is a function of our maturity and the incidence of the crises in our life we have been exposed to. Both would be hard to come by if one has not had them. However, a regular regime of breathing exercises as part of yoga is known to impart us the ability to deal with the adverse. In other words, a yogi would not have his panic button pressed so easily, thus maintaining composure. The latter is essential to have one put his best towards shooting the crises and emerge a winner. 


I have seen some pigeon hearts turn soldiers taking the adverse in their life head on. Yoga certainly is a great deal about crisis management and beating the blues.  

Jade Goody could have been saved

The 'Big Brother' star, whose tragic battle with cancer touched millions around the world, passed away in her sleep on the Mother's Day, as it is celebrated in the UK.

Mum Jackiey Budden, husband Jack Tweed and close family friend Kevin Adams were at her bedside at her home in Upshire, Essex. A young and promising life has been nipped in the bud.

All the while when she was on the countdown to her last, I wished I was among her close ones. For I believe I could have made atleast an attempt to help her prolong her life and, you would not believe, even save her. A mere wishful thinking, could be your immediate but a decent response. Others will call me moron. Yet others would reject me as a hyper emotional fan of late Jade and who is unable to come to terms with her death.

Blame my hyperbole sounding thinking to my unique exposure to the treminally ill, who bounced back to life after having been declared "a few days to a few months to live."

There have been a few cancer patients who were on the their death bed, with the close relatives living far off pouring in for the sure funeral of their beloved.

Their return from the clutches of death could be possible with the help of simple and sustained breathing exercises and just a marginal support of good dietary supplements.

I know I could not be believed. Even Jade could not have. But let me tell you if you know someone who is counting her/his days and is told that she/he may try doing the simple breathing exercises lying down for a few hours a day and go for malignancy check after a week or so, just to see if that has made some improvement in the parameters, I am sure patient will see a hope. Atleast she/he has nothing more to lose.

I am talking about the traditional, time-tested, yet much pooh-poohed for its claims, the practice of yoga, which is not only curative (I could be jailed for using this word for so-called uncurable maladies of our times) but hugely transforming- I am talking straight from my experience and that of several others who embraced the discipline after loosing their battles with literally all other known medical systems.

I hugely blame myself for not even having made an attempt to reach Jade for fear of being ignored or called a nonsense or my own lack of belief in my attempt to reach the television star.

Atleast, her foe-turned-friend Shilpa Shetty, an Indian film star and acknowledged authority on her own brand of yoga- power yoga- had a wonderful chance of strongly pushing through the idea of yoga to Jade.

(Shilpa was a butt of Jade's racist comment when the two celebrities were featured on a British reality show more than a year back. Later on Jade had made a public aplology to the Indian star and she was to appear on an Indian reality show with Shilp before she came to know that she had tested for malignancy; the show was abandoned in the midst of the tragic news which was broken to Jade when she was in India.)

I wonder if Shilpa made the attempt in advising Jade for taking refuge of yoga. Shilpa was invited to the marriage of Jade days before latter called it quits.

If only I could help my helplessness and reach Jade, she could have been alive.