Hatha yoga is a tremendous possibility if it is practised and transmitted in its right sense. Right now, hatha yoga is widely perceived as an exercise form. Changing this perception is an onerous task. Hatha yoga is not about losing weight, fixing your back, or getting healthy. Those are consequences, not the purpose.
Exercise is a very recent idea. In earlier generations, only wrestlers and warriors exercised. The rest of the people just worked. There was a lot of physical activity, so naturally, people were well-exercised.
Getting the idea out of people’s heads that yoga is an ancient form of exercise is a big task by itself. But if we don’t do this, true yoga will not happen. When you do Surya Namaskar, for example, do not focus on your muscles but on becoming in sync with the source of all energy in this solar system. How long will it take to get there? How long does it take to become a yogi? It can be a moment, it can be a millennium, or it can be never. You might as well ask how long it takes to fall in love with someone, or how long it takes to become a devotee. You can set a time only for physical aspects, not the subtler aspects of life.
If your goal is to become a yoga teacher, five-and-a-half months are good enough. If your goal is to become a yogi, it may happen in five-and-a-half seconds, or it may not happen in five-and-a-half lifetimes, because it is not of the physical nature. It depends on how an individual being allowed it to happen.
It is my wish that at least an element of being a yogi comes into people’s lives. Otherwise, something very fundamental is going waste. Bending and twisting your body has its benefits for your physical health, but there is much more to being a yogi. Some sense of being a little more than the physical body is the important thing. Even if you are not like that 24 hours of the day, at least a few moments in a day you should be a yogi. If you keep it alive, things that you do not understand, things that you have never experienced, will happen to you. That means you are allowing another dimension to function.
If you do not become a yogi in some way, life will put you through all kinds of things. That is why most human beings choose to hide from life. When someone cannot talk to more than three people in their life, when they cannot walk on the street with an open heart, loving everything that they see and cannot see, they are obviously hiding from life – they want to be safe. A coffin is a very safe place.
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