health

In this asana, the body, lying flat on the abdomen, is made to assume, by raising the head and the trunk, a pose which resembles an irritated cobra (Bhujanga). The main importance of this pose lies in the curving of the spine backwards. To maintain the activity of youth even at an advanced age, the spine must be kept supple and elastic. As age advances the muscles of the back get stiffened and lose their elasticity.

(THE TOPSY-TURVY POSE)

There is a natural tendency for an accumulation of fat in middle age. Sedentary occupations, the intake of more food than necessary, defective elimination, a disturbed metabolism of the body and want of exercise—all these attendant consequences of middle age add stealthily to our weight by an unconscious deposit of fat in our tissues. Within normal limits this is allowable but an excessive deposit of fat is certainly detrimental to health. It soon proves itself to be a drag on the body and demands greater and greater muscular effort to move the latter.

It is a well-known, fact that our environments, faulty diet, indoor and sedentary occupations, unhygienic surroundings, the hurry and stress of modern life, our emotions and sorrows, all upset the proper functioning of our involuntary organs long before any other tissue in the body and affect the mind to make it lose its psychic balance.

One of the vital things that maintains good health, at all ages, is the elasticity of the body which gets, lessened with advancing years. By the time we reach the beginning of middle age the body is fully developed, the bones are thoroughly hardened and there is a natural tendency towards an increasing rigidity of the body. Middle life which extends between the ages of 35 to 55 in the tropics is considered to be the mature period of life.

After the age of 45 when one is not generally accustomed to taking any physical exercises the practice of Yogic asana may prove rather discomforting at first. The rigidity of the muscles begins to manifest itself after that age. Certain muscular movements produce a discomforting sensation of stretching of the muscles. The spine loses its elasticity after the age of 45 and its bending in all directions plays an important part in all the Yogic asana. Yet this ought not to deter an elderly person from undertaking the practice of Yogic physical culture.

The elaborate rules about the preparation of food and the observance of correct diet, about personal behavior and environments which are recommended to be observed while practicing the asanas which are prescribed in Yogic literature are sure to prove confusing to a modern student of Yoga as it is not possible to observe and follow them in detail'.