Integrating Yoga, Meditation & Music...

Today is the International Day of Yoga (21st June), Music Day (21st June), Father’s Day (3rd Sunday of June). Please visit Wikipedia for the details and importance of these days.

Though they appear to have different themes and purposes, let us try to integrate these three different concepts into a holistic understanding. In my previous post https://researchsubbu.blogspot.com/2019/06/is-yoga-only-to-cure-roga.html?m=1, I explained how the yoga can be useful for our overall well-being and cleared the common myths about yoga. Today we will see how yoga is naturally integrated in our life… If we observe the infants and their movements and postures, they remind us about some of the yoga postures useful for the digestion, muscle strengthening etc. Just with this observation, I tried to find the analogy and luckily found it in one website… the link is here https://www.yoremikids.com/news/may-babies-do-yoga-yo-re-mi-for-child-development. Though we have not taught the infants about yoga & different asanas, they automatically and naturally do it… So it means the body is designed to have some natural exercises, which we do as infants and later stop to do and fall prey to different lifestyle disorders.

Even we can observe there is a strong association among yoga asanas, pranayama and meditation. In all the three, the breathing and the focus and regulation of breathing is the common element. That's why even the yoga and pranayama though they appear to give the physiological benefits, they also give the psychological benefits like stress reduction and mental peace etc. Thus, the yoga and meditation are well integrated and mutually supporting processes.

The other aspect we can commonly see is there is a soothing and pleasant music played in most of the guided meditations and yoga practices. It enhances the benefits. The music sets the mind and the mood and is useful in concentrating on yoga or meditation. That's how it gets well integrated with these.

In Indian culture, father is the head of the family and is the role model for the kids. His primary responsibility is to inspire the family members for good things by setting examples. Thus, the father has a role to keep his own health and well-being by setting an example for the wife and the kids to follow. The lifestyle changes such as making yoga and meditation a habit should start from the father sothat all the family members follow him. This is how on this Day of International Yoga ( This year's theme is Yoga for health- yoga at home), every father should take the lead to start practicing yoga and meditation daily for few minutes with all the family members. We can always integrate the music in this process for better results.