Yoga means unity.
Yoga is a form of exercise based on the belief that body and breath are closely related to mind and thought.
By controlling breathing and keeping the body in a fixed position (asana), yoga creates a harmonious balance.
Yoga is not magic and (Yogis), i.e. the yoga masters, are not able to disappear or hang above the ground.
But they can do many unusual and amazing things, such as holding their breath for hours or slowing down their heart to mimic death.
Practice in yoga contains 5 key elements.
1- Positive thinking and meditation
2. Proper breathing
3- Relaxation
4- Diet
5- Continuous practice
Exercises or asana are designed to relieve muscle cramps and strengthen internal organs and improve the flexibility of the joints and ligaments of the body.
Proper breathing and relaxation
Breathing gives life, simple as that.
Without oxygen, no cell can survive for more than a few minutes inside the body, and most people use only part of their full breathing capacity.
That is, they carry only one-third of the oxygen that the lungs are able to withstand.
The yoga breathing method teaches us to breathe through the nose and to pay more attention to the exhalation and to keep the lungs clean and free of toxins.
These techniques will be assigned to increase the physical and mental health of all of us.
Proper breathing focuses on the technique of breathing through the nose to release energy and life.
Breathing exercises focus on the exhalation rather than inhalation so that one can clear the lungs of fresh air and remove toxins from the body.
Relieving stress through relaxation is vital to good health.
Begin and end each yoga asana session with relaxation and rest between states. This will allow the released energy to flow freely.
Positive Thinking and Meditation
It is a state of consciousness.
When practicing meditation, first learn how to calm your mind and focus your mental energy inward.
Meditation helps you relieve stress and reabsorb lost energy.
Practicing yoga does not require special equipment.
A towel on the floor in a quiet room as vacant as possible is sufficient while the room temperature is balanced and nothing at all causes you to get out of comfort.
Practicing yoga should be enjoyable so non-vocal and calm music is recommended and one of the oldest flutes in the world (Armenian Duduk) can be used.
Or other works of world music masters such as (Kitaro) and (Yanni) will be very useful during morning practice.
Evening exercise sometimes relieves daily stress.
Avoid eating 2 hours before Yoga.
And the best and most beneficial duration is 90 minutes of training.
Calm down and do not rush.
Basics of Yoga
Lotus practice:
Unlike other yoga movements, regular practice of this movement will open the hip joint.
Move from one side to the other.
The hands can take on a prayers state.
Place the heel of your foot towards the body and the knee of the opposite foot. Lowering the knee helps you keep your foot high next to the hip joint.
Sun salute practice
Stand up straight with your feet together and your hands close to your body.
Take a deep breath and exhale as you raise the palms of your hands together toward your chest.
Breathe in and raise your hands above your head.
Bend your back so it is tilted forward and stretch as much as you can.
Exhale as you pull yourself forward and bend.
Bring your hands down to the floor and place them at your feet.
Palms facing down, your waist should be kept as high as possible, and your knees bent if necessary.
Pull your forehead inward toward your knees, breathe as you pull your right leg back as far as possible and bend the knee of your right leg down to the floor.
Pull your head to the ceiling.
The hand should remain in the same position throughout the movement.
Hold your breath.
Bring the left foot back and place it next to the right foot.
Keep your spine straight and do not lower your head and back and exhale.
Lower your knees to the floor and your chest directly between your arms without moving your body.
Place your forehead on the floor.
Breathe as you move your body forward and place your back on the floor.
Bend your chest forward and tilt your head back.
Bend your elbows slightly to the body and put your toes out and lift your back to a shape of 8, then exhale.
Note: Do not move your arms or legs when you are in this position.
Sun salute practice is a 12-step warm-up exercise that warms the body and mind to continue yoga sessions.
In each of the 12 positions, it causes different movements of the vertebral column, and because it is in harmony with the inhale and exhale of the breath, it induces a feeling of balance and harmony.
Doing the movements one after the other makes the salute practice pleasant, and do at least 6 steps at the beginning of each session.
Cobbler’s pose
Sit on your knees and keep the soles of your feet together.
Grasp the toes with your hands and place the heels of your feet in front of each other.
Note: The knees should be on the ground.
Place the pelvis in a vertical position to the ground and pull your spine up, not letting your pelvis bend, and pull your pelvis out of the spine as you breathe.
Continue stretching as you sit and breathe.
For variety, pull your head up along your spine and do not let your neck rotate.
The cobbler’s pose is for the flexibility of the spine and pain relief.
Lie on your stomach with your head turned to one side and your arms at your sides and your palms facing up.
Turn your head and place your chin on the floor, exhale, bend your knees and pull back, and hold your right ankle with your right hand and your left ankle with your left hand.
As you breathe in, slowly raise your legs by lifting your ankles off the ground so that your chest is raised at the same time.
Hold your breath.
Note: The weight of the body should be on the abdomen, tilt the head back as far as possible, hold this position as long as you are comfortable and hold your breath.
Slowly exhale and place your knees on the floor.
Let go the ankles.
Slowly bring your legs and arms straight down to the floor and turn your head to one side, in the same supine position you started with.
Bridge exercise
Lie on your back and breathe through your nose.
Place the palm of your hand facing the floor and hold the hip joint on the floor, then bend the knees and pull toward the abdomen while breathing.
Inhale and raise your leg as you exhale to a position perpendicular to the ground.
Note: The hip joint can be held by hand or put on the ground.
Exhale and continue pulling and bending the legs until the toes are on the ground on the back.
Keep your legs together.
If your hands are on your waist, separate them from your waist and place them on the floor with your palms facing down.
If placing your hand on the floor is uncomfortable, keep your hand on your waist in the same way.
Keep your knees straight, breathe through your nose, and hold for a few minutes.
If you are unable to bring your toes to the ground, lower them as far as possible and gradually reduce the distance.
Perform the movements in reverse to return to the original position.
Cobra pose:
Lie on your stomach with your head turned to one side and your arms at your sides and palms facing up.
Turn your head and place your chin on the floor.
Breathe in and then exhale slowly through your nose.
Bend your arms so that your hands are just below your chin.
The palms of the hands are facing downwards and the fingertips of both hands are almost touching each other and the elbows are on the ground.
Breathe in slowly through your nose, press your hands down, and lift your torso from the waist to the floor.
Bend your spine back and straighten your arms and keep your back on the floor.
Tilt your head back as far as possible.
Hold this position for as long as you exhale.
Exhale and do the reverse process until you reach step 1.
Yoga Benefits for Health
Here are some common ailments that can be relieved, reduced, or even prevented by regular yoga exercises.
Nervous weakness and mild mental disorders
Insomnia, migraines and headaches
Excessive fatigue and stress
Constipation and indigestion
Excessive secretion and Gastritis
Flatulence, hemorrhoids and hernia
Fecal incontinence or gallbladder and liver diseases
Colds, sinusitis and throat infections
Asthma and bronchitis and weak lungs
High or low blood pressure and heart attacks
Varicose veins, obesity and thyroid disease
Osteoarthritis and sciatica and muscle weakness
Poor and unusual performance of sexual powers
Kidney disease and bladder and prostate issues
Today meditation is one of the most advanced therapies that can be broadly classified as (Physical mental therapy).
Another masterpiece of Oriental Science and Philosophy and medicine: Many physicians consider meditation as a treatment and prevention of various diseases as a simple treatment to control blood pressure and better breathing and respiratory diseases such as asthma and more relaxation during daily anxieties.
In some cases, meditation is recommended for a complementary therapy along with other therapies.
Utilizing meditation for treatment is not a new topic.
Improvement by this method has existed for a long time in the ancient culture of the Orient and later all over the world, and it has even been mentioned in some way in different religions.
In fact, in practice, many religious groups practice meditation in various forms, and its value has been proven in reducing pain and increasing health.
Today, anxiety and lack of proper breathing, both in terms of Oriental and Western sciences, are mentioned as the most common health and psychiatric disorder, which lead to numerous issues that we mentioned in the section on diseases and chakras; And yoga ensures the activity of the chakras.
Regular and continuous meditation, even if done for a few minutes each day, will have a major effect on reducing stress.
1- Improves the process of attention and analysis
2- Increases the control of human beings in processing their thoughts
3- Increases the ability to control emotions
4. Helps significantly relieve stress on the body.
What yogis do by sitting on a mountain slope, or at least the general public perception of meditation, is completely wrong.
Meditation is a flexible way to deal with stress and anxiety and many special medical conditions that are increasingly disrupting our inner peace and tranquility.
Pittsburgh Airlines, for example, provides a large, well-equipped meditation room with a completely relaxed environment and comfortable furniture with paintings of nature so that passengers can escape from the crowded and stressful environment of the airport, even for a few minutes, which is a very valuable and smart idea by the airline for the health of its passengers.
A Chinese philosopher named (Chuang Tzu) invented a method of meditation in which the Chinese sit completely still and do not move.
In fact, they create a mental fast for themselves by thinking about disturbing thoughts. This mental fast that occurs in meditation completely purifies the brain and soul.
Physical and mental fasting is a method of rejuvenating the tissues of the body, which occurs by emptying the body and soul of all the painful input signals for a few minutes or days.
Taoists believe that we can achieve peace and health through this mental and physical fast.
Another belief he emphasizes is Buddhism, which has many followers in large parts of Central and East Asia.
But meditation has nothing to do with beliefs and religions, and all people of any creed or religion, even with their own personal beliefs, are able to practice meditation.
Despite the profound effects of meditation and the history of using this treatment, only about 30 years of scientific studies on the clinical effects of meditation have been performed.
In the 1960s and the decade that followed, there were numerous reports of the effects of yoga and meditation on Hindus who were able to dramatically control their levels of consciousness and control their body’s involuntary systems. These observations and reports became the source of experiments and clinical effects.
Many medical scientists at the time, who were very disappointed with the side effects of the drug, hoped that meditation was a safe and valuable solution to reduce stress and that it was very enjoyable to use.
Dr. Patricia Norris of the Mini-Heiger Clinic in the United States reported that people undergoing meditation treatment had significantly increased their immunity to HIV and cancer.
In another 1990 study, physicians and physiologists at Stanford University performed these techniques on 6,000 volunteers, and almost all of them acknowledged that meditation techniques were beneficial and calming.
Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, described meditation as a soothing response.
He discovered that the stages of meditation are in direct conflict with the effects of the nervous (sympathetic) system, the same system that forces one to flee or fight or escape.
While the (sympathetic) nervous system dilates the pupil of the eye, causing high blood pressure and shortness of breath, meditation works in reverse and lowers blood pressure and muscle tension.
Physical effects of meditation
1- Deep relaxation that occurs in meditation greatly reduces heart rate and overload.
2- Decrease in the amount of (cortisol) hormone that is produced during stress and also (blood lactate).
3- Reduction in free radicals produced in muscles that can cause tissue damage in the body.
It has been proven that these (free radicals) are now closely related to premature aging in the body.
4- Lowering blood pressure
5. Increasing skin resistance
6- Decrease in cholesterol: Cholesterol is directly related to various cardiovascular diseases.
7- Increasing the amount of oxygen in the lungs, which has a direct effect on easier and better breathing, and these effects are especially significant in patients with asthma.
8- Increasing the (biological) effects of youth: A standard study of long-term aging in the United States has shown that people who use meditation regularly, are on average 13 years and at least 5 years younger than their peers.
The spiritual effects of meditation
1- Improving personal spirits, ethics and behavior: As a result of meditation, proper brain communication increases, and this leads to a better understanding of personal life and improves morals and behavior.
2- General reduction of depression and anxiety.
3- Reduction of irritability
5. Increasing learning power and memory
6- Increasing the power of self-confidence
7- Increasing the feeling of youth and life
8- Increasing expectations in life, which is an important indicator of mental health in a society.
If a person is suffering from one of the diseases listed below, he can greatly help himself with meditation.
1- Addiction to drugs and alcohol
2- Severe and continuous stress
3. Chronic pain
4. Pregnancy diseases
5- Cancer and certain diseases
6- Rheumatic pains
7. Heart disease
8- High blood pressure
9- Infertility
10- Premenstrual pains
11. Headaches caused by stress or anger and rage
12- Fibromyalgia
13- Respiratory crises such as asthma
In a study by Dr. Kabat Zain, 72% of patients with chronic pain experienced a reduction in pain by at least 32% after an 8-week period of meditation.
Stanford University has done some interesting research to control rheumatic diseases.
The university has benefited 100,000 people suffering from rheumatic diseases in a 12-hour training class of meditation exercises as part of a rheumatism control program.
Trained people report between 15 and 20 percent success in controlling pain.
An Australian psychiatrist (Insulin Miras) went even further and found in a comprehensive study of cancer patients that the pain of 73% of all patients under study had decreased over a 10-year study period.
He also proved scientifically that in general, tumor size was reduced 10% in patients and it was effective in their quality of life up to 50%.
People who suffer from infertility are people who often complain of severe depression and anxiety.
In various studies, comparisons of some of these people with those who did not practice showed that meditation practitioners were more likely to become pregnant.
The basis of all the mentioned diseases, anxiety, stress and depression play a significant role in their recovery, provided that these techniques and exercises are performed continuously and using the right principles.
It should also be noted that the cause of infertility is not always stress, and here we have only examined the contribution of stress and anxiety.
Common types of meditation
There are basically four different types of meditation.
1- (TM) Meditation
2- (ZIN) Meditation
3- (Buddhist) Meditation
4- (Taoist) Meditation
But all of these methods have one thing in common, and they all agree on focusing on thought and peace of mind.
These techniques do not interrupt mobility, but rather focus the mind on a clear element in the brain that can be a sound or an image or a specific person.
When the brain becomes saturated as a result of focusing on this transparent element, there will be no room for worry and stress.
According to the theories of Joan Borysenko, one of the pioneers of physiotherapy in meditation:
Meditation can guide the brain to a great extent, and this guidance is in contrast to the dangers that in the past completely saturated the brain and caused stress.
Meditation causes the mind to move and fly in general.
Classification of meditation
Meditation is classified into two forms:
1- Concentration meditation
2- Thought meditation
Concentration Meditation: This is exactly the same as zooming in on a camera.
In photography we zoom in on an image, in meditation we focus on an image or sound or breath in the same way.
Yoga and meditation practitioners generally believe that there is a direct relationship between the rhythm of breathing and the mind.
For example, when a person is nervous or frightened and anxious, his breathing is short and fast, and on the other hand, when his mind is calm, his breathing is regular and deep.
As a result, focusing on breathing calms and deepens it and causes peace of mind.
Thought meditation: This type of meditation is associated with increased attention to the senses.
In this way, without the need to think, the information received from the five senses and other disturbing thoughts parade in front of the human mind, and the person, while sitting quietly without performing any special activity, will witness this parade and release the pressures on his mind and five senses.
Important topics in meditation
Each form of meditation has a different healing power than the other.
But all kinds of meditation cannot be useful for every person and will lead to their own risks.
Knowing what kind of meditation can be useful for whom is the art of the master and the practitioner and the instructor.
In general, do not prescribe concentration meditation or concentration exercises to people who have not achieved a good result in (reality test) and seem to have paranoid thoughts, and you are not allowed to prescribe these methods.
People with generalized anxiety disorder should also avoid meditation or concentration exercises.
This is a serious warning because this meditation or concentration exercise will add to their anxiety.
Long courses in meditation exercises are also not recommended for people who are sensitive and prone to (acute psychosis).
You can stay healthy with simple commands.
Final Words
Who was my legend and inspiration? I have been asked this question regularly for about 25 years.
This is the question that I asked during the years when I was a Master of Martial Arts and a doctor, and then I entered the world of philosophy and subsequently explored other sciences.
Professors, patients, friends, colleagues and sometimes my family have asked me and I have never answered, and now may be a good time to answer in this book.
No doctor, Scientist, Philosopher, or thinker in the entire history of mankind has inspired me, and subsequently, I have not chosen any genius as my legend but all of them have been with me in this way and I thank them from the bottom of my heart, both those who are still alive and those who are not.
My inspiration has been the unknown and my myths are too many to name.
I do not accept anything classified because I have always believed that science is walking in the unknown and nothing is classified under the name of science.
My questions never end and I have as many questions as space and time, and this always made my teachers angry during school.
I sincerely thank these people whom I am naming and apologize for not naming them in order.
Albert Einstein- Newton- Edmund Halley- Michael Faraday- Schrodinger- Ibn Haytham- Aburihan- Farabi- Rumi – Ferdowsi- Stephen Hawking- Galilei – Nicolaus Copernicus- Gerardinobrano- John Hendrick Everett-Charles Robert Darwin- Carl Edward Sagan- John Archibald Wheeler – Karl Schwarzschild – Confucius- Plato- Ceciliaben- Mulla Sadra- Shams- Thales- Arthur Stanley Eddington- Leonardo da Vinci- Archimedes- Wolfgang Ernst Pauli- Humphry Davy- James Clark Maxwell-
Professor Ueshiba: Founder of Aikido
Professor Jigoro Kano: Founder of Judo.
Professor, Seyed Vahab Mirsalehi who has been by my side for years and is truly a great professor full of love to know and learn.
He took my thoughts to difficult and sometimes scary challenges, for all those years which I thank and appreciate.
And every person whose name I have not mentioned, but his thinking was spread in the universe and I used them.
Science is travel in the depths of the unknown and this step in this way has the courage to raise issues that may be mocking from the eyes of others and may not even be accepted, but it must be moved and this is what I have done and will do throughout my life and to the best of my ability.
Philosophy is a deep thinking in the interpretation of operations carried out in the unknown.
Trust science and philosophy.