‘Take a deep breath’ was the first thing that I heard today when I watched the blurred crowd and my mother’s back. I gazed at the sight of TV and my mother in front of it to wipe off the blur and saw my weighty and aching-knees mother twisting her body as per the instructions of a man on the TV.”What are you doing?” I asked her.”Asana. It’s Yoga Day today,” she said, which sounded more like a cry for help. Then it dawned upon me that today will be all about how Yoga is India’s heritage. Good that it’s not a monument, or else we would not wait for a single breath to beautify it with our spit-art or write ‘Sonu loves Rani’ inside a heart with an arrow piercing through it. (Can someone explain to me the purpose of the arrow there?). So, I closed my eyes trying to complete my sleep.”Why don’t you get up and try some asanas?” my mother asked with gusto and I realized that my plan to escape this horror by oversleeping would be thwarted by my over-zealous mother. And today, this very day had to be the longest day of the year. Perhaps the Sun has decided to hold its posture for a little bit longer as its contribution to Yoga Day.”Why do I have to get up for that?” I said and assumed my pose to begin my session of yoga that I do every single day.
First asana: Lie on a bed, stretch out your legs, join your hands and stretch them over your head, turn your face to any one direction, blow out air from your lungs through your mouth (someone might even call it yawning), feel the stress leave your body. This asana is called let’s-wake-up asana. As an extension, you can take in a deep breath and leave it out through the mouth. You can also try this while being seated. Another variation of this asana is your hands stretched on either side. Second asana: Stand on your feet, keep shifting your weight between two legs, sway your head in sync with weight-shift and keep your eyes partly closed. It is called Half-sleep-walk asana. Third asana: This asana is performed in the outdoors and involves running, dodging human obstacles and having your body squeezed. Props to be used are bus or metro train. This asana also includes holding your breath at the stench of other people’s armpits while you are stuffed with them in either a bus or a train. Fourth asana: Place both cheeks of your butt evenly on a flat platform, keep your hands a foot away from the chest and separated by a smartphone. Keep your thumbs in motion, while other fingers stay in static holding the weight of the device. You can use a chair as a prop to sit on. If you’re an employee who works on a PC, you can do a variation between smartphone-thumb pose and keyboard-fingers pose. In keyboard pose, all of your fingers will be in motion. These are some of the most basic asanas that I do(and everyone else, for that matter). These asanas will get rid of the most critical problem in everyone’s life: time. If you keep on doing these asanas, you will – in your own time – will wither and die, and all your other problems will cease to exist like you. Happy International Yoga Day!