RADHIKA RAMMOHAN is a yoga practitioner and therapist with Yogavahini, a school in the tradition of Krishnamacharya. During the Yoga4Unity Program 2022, she shared her experiences of how yoga has helped her to refine her inner and outer environments. She also offered us some tips on how to deepen our own holistic well-being.
I have always been involved with the idea of holistic health. My first concern was environment and health, then I came to yoga three decades after that. And when I did, I realized that holistic health goes far beyond food.
I was always drawn to the idea of being able to connect directly with the food I ate with as few intermediary steps as possible. When I lived in the USA in the mid-1990s, I saw packaged, mass-produced, and processed foods. I felt uncomfortable about using chemicals for increasing yield or quality without reverence for the land. It felt intuitively wrong.
So I sought out and started buying organic foods from smaller retailers, who were not selling popular or branded items. This was also the time when genetically modified crops (GMOs) were being introduced in the USA. For instance, dairy cows were given rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormones) to increase milk production, and in Wisconsin, where I lived, there was activism against this. I always bought milk from dairy farmers who did not use rBGH.
At that time, food production and policy were skewed toward corporate interests, at least in the West. I started volunteering at an organic farm and doing some gardening, and I was shopping at cooperative natural food stores. Eventually my interest in food and food systems led me to care for a broader set of issues: land energy, regeneration of the environment, and human rights. I started reading books like Small Is Beautiful by F. Schumacher, and a few by the Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva, and they helped me envision solutions. I also became associated with an NGO in the USA called Association for India’s Development.
Once back in India, a friend and I started a community-based organic store, called reStore in Chennai in 2008. To this day, it remains an active place, a center for direct farmer support, local and traditional foods, zero waste, etc.
I was very busy and was running into difficulties in my ability to work with people. I realized I didn’t understand my mental patterns very well, or what was leading to the difficulties I had dealing with the world. I wanted to find a quieter space for myself from where I could understand myself better and the world better. This brought me to studying yoga. I did not want to only be a practitioner, but also understand the philosophy behind it and understand the yoga sutras. So I joined a yoga teachers training program.
The program led me to the affirmation that the Hindu tradition is really a holistic view of the universe, which is made up of the 5 elements or bhutas – akasha (space), vayu (air), agni (fire), apas (water), prithvi (earth).Everything is essentially made up of these basic elements.
In the last few generations, we have been leaning toward a reductionist view of life. We break down everything to its atomic or molecular structure, which is very practical, but in doing so we miss the interconnectedness between things. It’s not so evocative to say that you and I are made of the same elements, so we reduce it to a very atomic level, rather the level of the pancha bhutas.
In yoga, it is about
leading to a quieter mind
that is able to
witness itself a
and see from where these actions arise. a
Yoga
is for everyone, including people a
with busy lives, with a
family, etc.
We are not so very distinct from each other when we look at it this way. Any sense of competitiveness is reduced when we lose this sense of individual distinction. This is how I’ve seen yoga and sadhana bringing our minds to a quieter location that increases our sensitivity and lets us reflect. That’s also how I feel yoga helps us develop environmental sensitivity.
Yoga influences the way I handle relationships, which includes with other beings and the environment, and, of course, my work. Earlier, I thought of health in a very physical sense, and I related it mostly to food and exercise. But mental, emotional and spiritual well-being is actually the space we act from, and where our deepest aspirations come from. Very often we don’t get in touch with that core.
My way of thinking has shifted to inside-out. Our ways of relating to ourselves and to the world are mostly programmed or habituated. In yoga, it is about leading to a quieter mind that is able to witness itself and see from where these actions arise. Yoga is for everyone, including people with busy lives, with a family, etc. Yoga isn’t about the asanas or pranayama alone. It doesn’t have anything to do with a mat. It is about principles like satya (truth) and ahimsa (non-violence). So, while having a regular life with children, pets, and other people around me, if I can make sure that my interactions have the qualities of the yamas and niyamas, then the residue I leave behind in each of these interactions will be minimal. That is the practice of yoga.
So, even if you come to yoga for physical exercise, you will naturally gain more sensitivity. Hopefully, after finishing your practice, you will reach work and be able to see the behavior you are upholding in your workplace. Or coming home to your kitchen, maybe the way you are interacting with your house help, or someone else. Hopefully some of that stays with you, and you are able to say, “What am I doing here?”
Adding yoga to ecological campaigns is a wonderful idea. When we see environmental injustice, damage, or inequality, and we are not able to do very much about it, it can lead to a lot of anger. Being stuck in that anger is not very conducive for good activism. We might turn into angry activists who people love to hate. It’s not very efficacious.
When what we are
practicing
is contributing to some kind of quietness,
and we’re able to see
everything
around us with a little more compassion,
then
we are definitely in a good place.
When what we are practicing is contributing to some kind of quietness, and we’re able to see everything around us with a little more compassion, then we are definitely in a good place. It gives us a happier way to wake up in the morning, compared to saying, “Oh, the climate has not changed, abuse has not changed, and injustice has not changed.” Then it’s not a happy way to wake up.
I hope that yoga teachers impart to their students not only the knowledge of the asanas, but also the deep, transformative potential of the practice. Krishnamacharya once said, “The location for a yogi ought to be shantam.” That is equanimity – not in the sense of being unable to respond appropriately to different situations, but to respond from the space of shantam. To bring out whatever is appropriate – anger, courage, wonderment, love, compassion – but not to get carried away with it. To come back to the equanimous location.
It is difficult to practice yoga for a short time and expect your problems to be solved. You need to dive deeper. As a teacher, that’s my aspiration – to help my students take their practice deeper, to understand their minds and their yoga, to study some texts, to understand the underlying foundations behind what we are teaching them.
For others, I would say get involved with a community or sangha. Study together. It could be a formal teacher training course. We can create communities of practitioners who learn from each other and take their practice deeper.
I think it’s important that we have some way of knowing if what we are practicing is transformative. If we can sense that we are more sensitive today than yesterday, we can say we are progressing. It’s a sense of refinement. If we are not feeling that, it’s okay, but we have to keep trying and learning.
Radhika Rammohan
