QnA with Sri Sri
Wednesday, July 22, 2015

 Q: Across the world, Yoga is a billion dollar industry, India now has a Minister for yoga too. Could you list out what India should do to become the crest jewel of yoga once again? 


Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: We need to have a quality control in yoga; anyone cannot say anything and call it yoga. All yoga teachers should do certain hours of the practice of yoga each day. Today someone attends a yoga class for a week and then they become yoga teachers. They can’t move their body but they instruct others to move their bodies. They can’t sit still for 10 minutes, and they talk about meditation to others.


 If you cannot sit still for a few minutes, how can you teach meditation? Walk the talk and talk the walk should be the slogan for a yoga teacher, and they should have a thorough training on yoga.


 It is good that the Government of India has come up with quality control measures in yoga. They are designing methods and setting up standards to certify yoga teachers, and this is necessary. It was the same with Ayurveda. There is a joke between the Ayurvedic doctors. They say, “Yasya kasya taroh mulam yena kena api gharshitam | yasmai kasmai pradatavyam yat va tat va bhavishyati”. (The root of this or that tree - mixed with something or the other, given to someone or the other will cause anything!)


 This is what was happening in Ayurveda. But, in the past few years the Government has standardized the practice, the medicine, and the doctors. I wouldn’t say that the education on Ayurveda is the best, it has to improve a lot. There are doctors who have finished their education in Ayurveda and don’t know how to take nadi diagnosis (pulse reading). It needs improvement, but at least some standard has come.


 In the same way, if someone wants to teach yoga they should know about the nature of the mind, about the patterns of breath, about the seven layers of existence, then they can become good yoga teachers.


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