Yoga Therapy

作者：中国国际广播电台Easy FM   轻松调频FM91.5

中国国际广播电台官网采访链接：http://english.cri.cn/7146/2010/09/05/2361s592882.htm

Nowadays people are struggling to keep up with many everyday things, but keeping fit is one thing we should always keep in mind. When you feel under great pressure and stress, there's one therapy that may be very helpful.

Zhang Wan tells us more.

Mohan India is a teacher in China. He says he has lots of students, all of different ages.

"It's amazing I have students who are 11 or 20 years old, also I have students who are 65 years old, so all groups of people."

What kind of class could suit students of such different ages? It could be nothing other than yoga. Mohan, who has been practicing yoga for 18 years, came to China in 2003 to be a yoga teacher.

"At that time yoga was still very young in China, and many times people ask me if yoga comes from America, because there was less information about yoga."

However, seven years later, he says he feels that for many students in China, yoga has become part of life.

"It's really wonderful that they are serious for practice. It's very clear, if you don't get benefit, you would never continue. I have students who started to practice since 2003, and till now, it's been 7 years for them with me."

Mohan says yoga tells people how to live a happy life. It not only makes the body healthy, but also quiets the mind. Lin Xiaohai, who teaches at a yoga school, is the general secretary of China Yoga 2010, a conference that just concluded in Beijing. He says:

"Currently in China, yoga has gained acceptance from more and more people. Now the living standards for people in China have been greatly improved, so an increasing number of people are starting to practice yoga."

Lin says many people turn to yoga at first in an attempt to lose weight, but gradually they find their physical discomfort greatly decreased.

"Such as insomnia, cervical spondylosis and so on. Also we have people who mentally have trouble, let's say, are experiencing a setback in life, through practicing yoga, they get the answer to the question of what we live for, that is, we live for happiness."

However, is it hard to learn these yoga poses? Mohan says compared to practitioners from other cultures, Chinese have advantages when learning yoga.

"I feel the cultures of India and China are very similar, we have such practices in yoga in India, and in China you have Taiji, Qigong, and Chinese medicine. So something is very close, and people know what the essence of the practice is. I feel they can understand the essence much better and faster, because already in their culture, they have the Qigong and Taiji, which work with the same principal of energy to control the mind and calm down the mind."

Recently when working people in both public and private organizations in Beijing have been encouraged to exercise during breaks in their office hours, a set of yoga exercises set to music has been selected as one of the options in Beijing.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.