It was during a yoga class in Singapore that the irony in the popularity of yoga, struck Alagu Muthu once again. “Yoga is being practised across the world, in so many different forms: dance yoga, heat yoga, Bikram yoga,” she says, adding, “Yet looking at this class, I realised what most people are doing is just exercising without focussing on their breath and mind.”
It was time, she felt, that the younger generation be re-introduced to the basic sutras of Yoga, as dictated by the sage Patanjali. In 2008, she along with her mentor DV Sridhar, founder of Yoga Rakshanam, wrote the book, The Song of Truth . Eleven years later, the book is being re-released, this time as a coffee-table version titled, Understanding Yoga , sponsored by VL Indira Dutt.
The book is a collection of the 196 sutras on the theory and practice of yoga, as mentioned in Patanjali’s text. Each sutra is accompanied by an English verse (of four lines), written by Muthu, followed by a prose explanation by Sridhar. The book is divided into four chapters: samadhi , explains a person’s journey into yoga; sadhana , on its practice; vibhuti ; on its power; and finally, kaivalya , on the freedom it can give you.
“What many people forget is that yoga is not only about asanas . In fact, of the eight steps of yoga, asana is just the third. The first two are yama , your relationship with the outside world, and niyama , self-discipline,” says Muthu, who herself underwent her teacher training at Yoga Rakshanam back in 2000. We need asanas because a fit mind needs a fit body, but after that we also need pranayama (your breath work), pratyahara (ability to not be distracted), dharana and dhyana , until you finally reach samadhi .
“The samadhi is when you finally lose the concept of ‘I’, and can see the world objectively,” she explains. The book then, is her attempt to re-acquaint the younger generation to the holistic form, meaning and philosophy of yoga. To do this, she converted the sutras into easily-readable verses. “The first few verses just came to me, when I was travelling to Madurai from Kodaikanal,” she recalls. From thereon, Muthu worked on each of the 196 verses, going back and forth with Sridhar on the meaning it should convey.
“Chapter 1, Sutra 20. It’s on Sraddha ,” says Sridhar when asked about his favourite verse in the book. Sridhar, who has studied under Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram’s legendary guru, TKV Desikachar, says his main aim for this book was to make the theory of yoga accessible to everyone. “A lot of intellectuals have provided their explanation and interpretation of the sutras , but it doesn’t make for easy reading. So I have tried to explain the verses in simple, every-day language, without diluting their meaning,” he says.
The authors’ belief in making the theory of yoga accessible comes across not only in text, but also in the way it has been designed. Rich-coloured paintings by Sohan Qadri, with their iconic beeja (seed), are interwoven in the book. “Qadri was himself a yogi, who practised in his last years in Copenhagen. We were lucky that Sharan from Apparao Galleries could get permission from his family to use his paintings in our book,” she says. “If it were up to me, I would have put Nature photography in sepia tones. Thankfully, my young designers had better ideas!”
Understanding Yoga , released at Savera Hotel, is priced at ₹450.
