Yoga and Non-violence
Colette Barry, Contributing Writer
Waking Times
“Yoga is a part of everyone’s life.” – Anonymous
Although this quote might raise a few question marks and force the reader to ponder over its authenticity, I can still confidently repeat it again: “Yoga is a part of everyone’s life.” To understand this further, we shall look at an example:
Dr. Summers is a 45 year-old micro-biologist who works in a hospital. Her husband is a tall muscular construction engineer who spends all day at construction sites building massive sky-scrapers that tower the city. Both husband and wife are humans, and, needless to say, both have similar bodies (apart form the obvious differences, of course). But what the wife knows and the husband does not know is that their bodies are made up of millions of cells. Cells are hence part of both bodies, but it is only the wife that knows this secret.
How Yoga Works?
Yoga is an exercise of attaining serenity. Serenity is the “stand-by” mode of our bodies. Our bodies are not meant to face hardships and torture. They have been designed to be handled delicately in order to attain maximum benefits. Violence, hence, is something that is foreign to the human body, it is surplus to demands, and its presence only leads to unwanted consequences. Yoga allows for the peace and harmony of both mind and body that helps us to eradicate any form of violence in our lives and keep it away for as long as we can.
Yoga Changing Lives
Research shows that kids, who had the reputation of being bullies in school, under-went a wonderful transformation to a more calm and composed way of life after they went through a few weeks of yoga. Yoga also allowed these children to perform better on school tests since their young minds became free of all disturbances and distractions. The adult mind is similar to a child’s mind, the only difference being that the habits imprinted on an adult’s mind have mostly become permanent and take more time to change, if a change is required. Yoga is the most promising hope for people with anger-management issues and those prone to engage in domestic and social violence. Yoga can also be introduced to people imprisoned for crimes related to any sort of violence, and can be an effective tool to nurture those in the captivity of juvenile correction cells.
On a social level, yoga groups of middle-aged women enable healthy interaction between like-minded people, allow for a collective release of life’s daily stresses, and even serve as a leisurely activity. A society consisting of peaceful women will surely become a non-violent society since women not only comprise half the population, but they also hold the key to the harmony of men. One outrageous idea would be to allot part of the defense budget toward holding nation-wide yoga conferences, since this will indirectly decrease violence in society!
About the Author
Author and Illustrator of Wall Yoga the Art of Centering, Colette Barry is a licensed massage therapist, certified yoga and Pilates instructor. Through Colette’s lifelong work in rehabilitation with her husband and her father, physicians of Chiropractic, she developed two programs: “Wall Yoga” and the “Barry Method”. Colette’s programs go far beyond muscle isolation creating a technique that includes using visual cues to connect the mind and body. These programs result in a harmonious muscle and overall body alignment, claiming “perfect alignment produces perfect results!”
Join Colette’s online training programs at Udemy, “The Complete Wall Yoga Strength Program”, “Introduction to Wall Yoga”, “The Whole Body Wall Yoga Makeover” and “Barry Method”. These programs are available to anyone who would like to experience a profound new level of healing. Please visit Colette’s excellent blog at YogaTrends.org.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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