Remembering the Teachers

Debunking myths about yoga

- Shri Harold Sequeira

I was around thirty years, living in the Bandra suburb of Bombay and working in a petroleum company; going to a bodybuilding course near my home with a friend, Ravi, younger than me.

One day, I read an advertisement for a 'Yoga Better Living course' at The Yoga Institute nearby, in Santacruz. Both myself and Ravi, not knowing what yoga was, joined a 21-Day Better Living Course. Upon entry, I asked where their gym was, and the Principal, Dr. Jayadeva, showed us an empty hall. I asked where the equipment was, and Doctor said my body was the equipment.

Out went my first wrong notion of yoga; of yoga as gymnastics.

There was wrong information about yoga being like a religion. In our first session with the Masterji, Shri Yogendraji, venerable Founder of The Yoga Institute, I found that yoga was not religion.

“For,” said the Masterji, “religion has a belief system, rituals, dogmas etc., whereas yoga believes in self-experimentation and selfbelief called empiric experience.” This ended my first second wrong notion of yoga; of yoga as religion.