With Prime Minister Narendra Modi pushing yoga on the global stage, the ages-old vedic practice is now gaining international recognition. However, there are many who want to practice yoga but aren't sure how to go about it.
"The 10 Minute Yoga Solution" (HarperCollins/ Rs 699/ 253 pages) by popular author and yoga acharya Ira Trivedi serves to be an apt manual for all those who are yet to foray in to the vedic practice.
This book is equally significant for practitioners too as its attention to minute details involved in the practice, the nittigritties of various 'asanas' and, more importantly, the lessons of a master practitioner find sufficient mention in the book.
For the author Trivedi, the journey began about a decade ago when she had just returned to India from the US and was, in her own words, depressed, lethargic and had a major case of writer's block.
"I was overweight, I had bad skin and was losing hair. None of my clothes fit me and my constant state of agitation was ruining my personal relationships," Trivedi recalls in the book. To cut a long story short, her state of being was "utterly imbalanced" when she first began her yoga practice.
Today, after ten years of dedicated practice, Trivedi is at her ideal weight and has several television shows on yoga to her credit. She states that her body, hair and skin are not only under control but are "fabulous". She has a healthier attitude towards her work and a better control over her emotions.
But not everybody has the time and willingness to dedicate oneself for yoga. As the author rightly notes in the book, one may have the desire to do yoga but it may appear like an impossible dream. Yoga classes are generally time consuming, expensive, inaccessible and often tedious.
The remedy?
The author impresses upon the fact that even ten minutes of yoga can result in physical, mental and, eventually, spiritual transformation and shares anecdotes from her personal life as an example to establish her point.
"When I first started doing yoga more than a decade ago, the thought of being on a yoga mat for a full hour seemed tremendously boring. I needed high energy activities — running, squash, tennis, gymming — anything that could get my endorphins spinning and the calories burning," she notes.
But all of her preconceived notions changed once she actually started doing yoga and, more importantly, she started with just ten minutes of practice every day. The transformation was "slow and subtle" but Trivedi patiently stuck to her ten minutes routine. The ten minutes steadily grew to 20, 30 and 60 minutes a day and has today given her everything that a "back-breaking gym routine or a sweaty, tedious marathon did not".
The author uses repeated references to her personal life and succeeds in conveying the simple fact that the distance between you and yoga is only the matter of starting it and once you have started it, there can be no looking back as it naturally turns into a vital part of your life.
By answering simple questions like what is asana and pranayama, the book first introduces the readers to the basics of yoga and then presents simplified elements and vivid details of the practice to help you start on your yoga journey. The book is richly illustrated and carries about a hundred images of the author in various yoga postures and asanas.
Unlike her often long and winding sentences in her novels like "The Great Indian Love Story" or "There's No Love On Wall Street", Trivedi has this time stuck to simple language and diction, which sort of adds a realistic tone to her narrative. If you have a yearning to do yoga at some point of your life, this book is a fitting manual.