Fitness Mantra: Spreading peace through the power of yoga

I’ve been writing articles on Swami Vishnudevananda Saraswati’s teachings of Sivananda yoga, an unhurried yoga practice that typically focuses on the same 12 basic asanas or variations thereof every time, bookended by sun salutations and savasana (corpse pose). 

Reading the previous articles, a student asked who he was and how many types of yoga were there.  Swami Vishnudevananda Saraswati was a disciple of Swami Sivananda Saraswati. After he had spent years learning under Swami Sivananda, Swamiji gave Swami Vishnudevananda a 10-rupee note to travel to the West and spread the teachings of vedanta. 

‘People are waiting’ were the words of the Master. So, after travelling and spreading the word of yoga, he set up The International yoga vedanta centers and ashrams. He established the Sivananda Yoga Teachers’ Training Course, one of the first yoga teacher training programmes in the West. His books established him as an authority on hatha yoga. Most forms of yoga like ashtanga, vinyasa and iyengar, can be classified as hatha yoga and raja yoga. (Raja yoga is also known as ashtanga yoga (eight steps of yoga), because it is organised in eight parts: The eight steps of raja yoga provide systematic instruction to attain inner peace, clarity, self-control and realisation). 

Swami Vishnudevananda had a vision while meditating at the Yoga Retreat in Nassau. He saw people running in terror from a giant ball of fire. Although he could not immediately understand this awesome vision, he knew from past experience that whatever he saw in the form of revelation would eventually materialise. For this reason, he founded the TWO (True World Order), which aims at promoting world peace and understanding. 

Throughout his life, Swamiji was deeply concerned about the well-being of the world and the constant disaster of wars. This lead him to learn to fly and then personally pilot a small plane over several troubled areas of the world. He flew his ‘peace plane’ even over the Berlin wall prior to German reunification. 

Not only did he create discussion and awareness in the news media, but he also ‘bombarded’ these war torn areas with flowers and peace pamphlets while repeating the peace mantra — Om Namo Narayanaya. Swamiji was also known as the ‘Flying Swami’ for the different peace missions he accomplished around the world. — The writer is a certified international yoga acharya and owner of Old Mercara, a brand of homemade ice creams, honey, jams and squashes.