Yoga, with a few jokes thrown in

A number of yoga teachers are taking the
exercise regime out of the realms of solemnity
and giving it a more down-to-earth feel with
levity and selfies, says Ashish Sharma

Dressed in a loincloth, Baba Ramdev whips through a series of yoga poses as millions watch him on television. The sun has just begun to peep over the horizon but the hirsute guru is already leading his charges. “If you sweat this much in the morning, you will never get old,” he says, the left eye winking involuntarily. Ramdev says pranayama, the art of breath control, can cure an array of diseases. “Its practice leads to a surge in kundalini energy,” he intones as his belly makes waves with each sharp intake of air. Around him, the men and women start breathing in unison, eyes closed. Some faces begin to show a near-mystical glow. They are entering the ‘zone’.

Is yoga as pensive an activity as Ramdev wants it to be? Not quite. Some yoga teachers, in the true tradition of yogic postures, are turning the exercise culture on its head. They crack jokes, chant to peppy songs and hang out with disciples once the sessions are over. Garima Batra Sharma, founder of The Yoga Lounge, believes in being less solemn. “There is a perception we belong to another planet. But I don't let people take things too seriously in my class,” she says. The idea is not attainment, she explains, “flow instead.” Really? So, what about obtaining spiritual creaminess? “Very few seek that. Most come to lose weight”.

These yoga gurus don’t claim to be saints or prophets — or that they emit cosmic energy. “I am a new-age yogini. I love to dance, travel and dress excitingly,” says Deepika Mehta, who coached actors Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Bipasha Basu for Dhoom 2. Must the road to enlightenment be paved in sincerity? Not all all. “Fun is important. Once in a while, I crack a joke. After class, I hang out with students. We chill out, drink coconut water, get breakfast and get silly sometimes,” laughs Mehta.

Television yoga guru Suneel Singh, 52, too, has a tendency to lighten things up. “There are two simple therapies. One is laughter yoga and the other, clapping yoga,” he says. “Everyone laughs. There’s no judgement.” Singh believes ego is the enemy of both humour and yoga.

The new bunch of yoga teachers do not believe in “giving gyan”. “Not everyone is on a spiritual path. Some are in search of a social environment, too,” says Navneet Joshi, who trains corporate clients of KairaliAyurvedic Group. Sharma remembers during the early days of her studio when she had shown the door to a man who had come in search of phone numbers rather than enlightenment. But Joshi believes there is scope for spiritual networking, and Sharma allows social networking by way of yoga selfies (self-photos). “I understand the excitement that comes when doing the headstand for the first time. I oblige them with a picture that I email to them.”

Pune-based Jaspreet Singh, a yogi, cites the tranquillity he has found after twisting his body into knots. Sometimes, he says, his third eye itches. “Who your yoga teacher is and what he represents are no small matters in modern life,” he says. “Once I fell asleep in the middle of savasana and started to snore lightly (I was told). They just left me there until the class ended. I woke up to an empty room and saw the teacher putting away the mats.” But there is no embarrassment here. Singh says, “If we refuse to feel embarrassed, liberation is ours.’

Celebrity yoga teacher Payal Gidwani, who coaches star couple Kareena Kapoor Khan and Saif Ali Khan, says there is no need to feel ashamed, even when some poses force wind out. This is the purpose of yoga — to relieve suffering, and flatulence. “Relieving wind is illusory,” philosophises Singh. “You are not the body, and therefore not the karta (doer).”

Yet the fear of being embarrassed refuses to let go. As Gidwani points out, “Thousands of years ago, yoga was practised only by men. It was designed by men, for men.” Yet today, getting the men in is not always easy. Sharma says, “There’s one man for every five women in a class. Mostly, men accompany wives. Also, most men leave after a month or two. It’s the women who are consistent.”

Paloma Gangopadhyay, director, Bikram Yoga India, says, men initially find themselves stiff and inflexible. But the 26 postures done in a studio that is toasty at 42 degrees Celsius often gets them hooked.

This challenging, possibly dangerous, hot yoga may appeal to a guy’s sense of self. Yet, points out Mehta, embarrassment is never far behind. “A guy’s worst nightmare is not being able to do a pose that needs strength and flexibility.”

Worse still are the men who wear loosefitting shorts for comfort, prompting discomfort in others. Sharma says she urges her students to wear longer yoga pants or capris. But Joshi insists shorts are better. “This way, the teacher can keenly observe your body postures.”

Singh suggests a simple way to ensure your jock credentials are not advertised during an adventurous pose. “Sit down and twist to one side; squat — did you feel a breeze back there?” A youngster forced to take yoga for bad grades tells us about his experiences. “We are made to do yoga in a cramped room. The air is thick with sweat, everything seems in slow motion. However, it’s the close-pressed flesh of others that we admire most. This gives you the chance to smack someone.” He adds pawanmukta asan (wind-relieving pose) is his favourite.

Yoga, played by the rules, can fetch you enlightenment in this lifetime. For this, it is necessary to do it the right way, have your posture corrected by a teacher. But Singh doesn’t appreciate a teacher who lingers and breathes hot all over you. “No concept of personal space,” complains Singh.

Sharma, like other likeable teachers, says her approach is to establish a relationship with students. “This takes a few classes. I take it on myself to correct them. Mostly they get it right by seeing me. But if that doesn't happen, I physically correct them.” Some students tend not to follow the herd. But that is not a problem. Mehta says some even go solo in the chanting of Om. “I prefer to let people express themselves. If someone’s Oms are not in line, I find it sweet,” she says.

IN TOUCH WITH INNER PUPPY 
Yoga poses have been inspired by animal postures. Ancient dogs influenced much of yoga development. Their body movements and postures were studied by seers and put into yogic practice. Now, 2,500 years after, it seems to have come full circle. Yoga has gone back to the dogs again.

 Doga, yoga with dogs, is increasing in popularity in the West. To live in harmony with all beings, including dogs, seems a truly yogic principle. Florida-based doga teacher Suzi Teitelman explains sukasana in doga. “We sit with the dogs, spine to spine, connecting our chakras.”

Because dogs are pack animals, they are a natural match for yoga’s emphasis on spiritual union with other beings. “Dogs will follow their leader, and when their leader is doing yoga in a place of bliss and love, the dogs will follow even more.”

According to Teitelman, bonding is the top benefit of doga. “Otherwise the benefits are the same as yoga’s: peace, strength, flexibility, massage, all lead to happiness and samadhi.” So, can dogis calm that tail during savasana (corpse pose)? “Yes, we encourage the dog to lie directly on us in savasana. It helps with massaging the internal organs.”

Mammography has become a fighting word in recent years, with some researchers questioning its value and others staunchly defending it.

One especially disturbing criticism is that screening mammography may lead to “overtreatment,” in which some women go through gruelling therapies — surgery, radiation, chemotherapy — that they do not need. Indeed, some studies estimate that 19 per cent or more of women whose breast cancers are found by mammography wind up being overtreated.

This problem occurs, researchers say, because mammography can “overdiagnose” breast cancer, meaning that some of the tiny cancers it finds would probably never progress or threaten the patient’s life. But they are treated anyway. So where are these overtreated women? Nobody knows. They are out there somewhere, studies suggest. But the figures on overtreatment are based on theory and calculations, not on counting the heads of actual patients known to have experienced it. No one can point to a particular woman and say, “Here’s a patient who went through the wringer for nothing.”

Overdiagnosis is not the same as a false positive result, in which a test like a mammogram initially suggests a problem but is proved wrong. False positives are frightening and expensive, but overtreatment is the potential harm of mammography that worries doctors most, according to an article published recently in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

But the authors also say that estimates of how often overdiagnosis and overtreatment occur are among the least reliable and most controversial of all the data on mammography.

In the past, overdiagnosis was thought to apply mainly to ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, a breast growth that may or may not turn cancerous. Now, researchers think that invasive cancers are also being overdiagnosed and overtreated by mammography.

Mahny Djahanguiri takes classes in London. “My style is Dogamahny TM.” The dog here is secondary. “All doga poses (more or less) have the same name as human asanas. Triangular pose is the same: Only that you lift your dog and place it on your torso if it’s less than 4 kg. It acts as a weight. Large dogs can act as a bolster.”

Djahanguiri says through doga you can cultivate ahimsa (non-violence). "We never force the dog to do anything it doesn’t want to do. The dog is the dogi and the owner the yogi. The class is about slowing the central nervous system of the owner and the dog. It has vedic chanting, pranayama and meditation. The breathing exercises, if performed by the yogi, will calm the dogi.”

Look for cancer,and find it.

Mammography has become a fighting word in recent years, with some researchers questioning its value and others staunchly defending it.

One especially disturbing criticism is that screening mammography may lead to “overtreatment,” in which some women go through gruelling therapies — surgery, radiation, chemotherapy — that they do not need. Indeed, some studies estimate that 19 per cent or more of women whose breast cancers are found by mammography wind up being overtreated.

This problem occurs, researchers say, because mammography can “overdiagnose” breast cancer, meaning that some of the tiny cancers it finds would probably never progress or threaten the patient’s life. But they are treated anyway. So where are these overtreated women? Nobody knows. They are out there somewhere, studies suggest. But the figures on overtreatment are based on theory and calculations, not on counting the heads of actual patients known to have experienced it. No one can point to a particular woman and say, “Here’s a patient who went through the wringer for nothing.”

Overdiagnosis is not the same as a false positive result, in which a test like a mammogram initially suggests a problem but is proved wrong. False positives are frightening and expensive, but overtreatment is the potential harm of mammography that worries doctors most, according to an article published recently in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

But the authors also say that estimates of how often overdiagnosis and overtreatment occur are among the least reliable and most controversial of all the data on mammography.

In the past, overdiagnosis was thought to apply mainly to ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, a breast growth that may or may not turn cancerous. Now, researchers think that invasive cancers are also being overdiagnosed and overtreated by mammography.

According to researchers, mammography could be leading some down a slippery slope to unneeded surgery, chemotherapy and radiation The concept of overtreatment is based on the belief that not all breast cancers are deadly. Some never progress, researchers suspect, and some progress so slowly that the patient will probably die of something else, particularly if she is older or has other health problems.

But mammography can find all of these tumours, even those too small to feel. And doctors and patients rarely watch and wait — once a tumour is found, it is treated, because nobody knows how to tell the dangerous ones from those that could be safely left alone.

Where do the numerical estimates of overdiagnosis come from? In several large studies of mammography screening, women judged to have the same risk of breast cancer were picked at random to have the test or to skip it. Early on, more cancers were expected in the mammogram group, because the test can find small tumours.

Over time, the groups should have equalised, because if small tumours in the unscreened group were life-threatening, they would have grown big enough to be felt or caused other symptoms. But in several studies, the number of cancers in the unscreened group never caught up with the number in the mammography group. The reason for the difference, researchers assume, is that there must have been women in the unscreened group who had cancers that were never diagnosed and never progressed — and therefore did not need treatment. The next step is to subtract the number of cancers in the unscreened group from the number in the mammography group.

The result is the estimate of how many women in the mammography group were overtreated. “We don’t know which individual women those were,” says Lydia Pace, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an author of the new paper. “All we know is the proportion, and a lot of people would argue that we don’t really know the proportion.”

This kind of calculation was used in a Canadian study of about 90,000 women, published in February in the journal BMJ. The authors found that after 15 years there was a “residual excess” of 106 invasive cancers in the mammography group. The authors attributed that to overdiagnosis, and said that it amounted to 22 per cent of the 484 invasive cancers found by mammography. They concluded that for every 424 women who had mammography in the study, one was overdiagnosed.

Other studies have estimated overdiagnosis in different ways, with huge variations in the results, reporting that 5 per cent to 50 per cent of cancers found on mammograms are overdiagnosed. To make it clear that the numbers are uncertain, some offer ranges.

It is scary to consider the prospect that mammography could be leading some down a slippery slope to unneeded surgery and chemotherapy. But the numbers on overdiagnosis are all over the map. The best hope for resolving the confusion may lie in molecular tests that can differentiate between dangerous tumours and those unlikely to progress — but those are in the future.