Of Surya Namaskar and self esteem: how touching my toes changed my outlook

I wouldn't be the first to laud the merits of yoga, not by a long shot. I don’t really need to go into all the pluses of it, everyone knows. I know that the National Library of Medicine (NLM) over in the states does a great deal of research into the benefits of yoga as well as Ayurvedic (Indian herbal) medicine and that the Marines have incorporated yoga into their physical training regimens. Instead I shall focus on how it can be beneficial for the mind.

Last month an organisation I'm involved in, the Hindu Swaimsevak Sangh (HSS furthermore in this entry) had a health and fitness month where yoga was being promoted. The flagship routine that was most promoted was the famous ‘Surya Namaskar’, sometimes referred to as sun salutation in English, but I won’t be calling it that here. As a part of this we as members were encouraged to do as many Surya Namaskars as possible over the month, and were even given spreadsheets to document our process. For me personally this proved to be an effective incentive; making it into a game (almost) and wanting to outdo my fellow members meant I really got into it. Towards the end of month I was doing 13 a day, a full ‘cycle’ if you please.

But that wasn't the only plus from it. Since I was a child exercising I had never been able to touch my toes, I yo-yoed between thinking that it was just something people can just do or that I would develop the ability eventually. As recently as January I had resigned myself into thinking that I would just not be able to do it. This had been reinforced by seeing my friend’s significantly overweight brother do it without any trouble at all despite doing no exercise whatsoever.

One morning as I was doing some Surya Namaskars I was watching my posture in the different positions quite closely and noticed that when I tried to touch my toes I would bend my legs in such a manner that they would bend outwards, to make 100% sure that I wasn't cheating by bending my knees to touch my toes. However this action made the distance between my fingers and my toes greater than the actual distance. As such, I straightened out my legs, and hey presto! I could touch them! It turned out that throughout my life I had been artificially creating an obstacle to this otherwise straightforward task.

This is something I can apply to matters of self esteem too; the challenges we all face can be difficult as they are, but if we spend all our time berating ourselves, putting ourselves down and not believing we have the ability to undertake the task at hand, we make it impossible. Simply because our outlook is coloured by the fictions we create.

And that’s how yoga improved my self esteem.

Thanks for reading,
 

The Vedic Underdog.