No Matter What Ails You, Yoga Has The Cure. These Four Lives Were Totally Changed By Yoga

For years, Sriram Jaganathan would enter his office looking like a zombie and have colleagues tell him he needed a good night's sleep. Which, says the 37-year-old, was easier said than done, as he hadn't slept a full night in 15 years. "I would never manage more than a couple of hours," says the head animator at Hey Math, an education website.

Blogspot

He then headed for Chennai-based Yoga Nidhi, where he learnt the importance of pranayama. "In a couple of weeks I discovered my sleep pattern again... it was a miracle," says Jaganathan, adding that one of the most effective but simplest yoga exercises he learnt was to lift his arms and breathe slowly five times and then do the same with the arms by the side.
"Yoga - with the right stretches and breathing patterns ¡ª has the ability to transform lives," says Saraswathi Vasudevan, head of Chennai-based Yoga Vahini. On the first International Yoga Day, we take a look at some people whose lives have changed because of this 5,000-year-old art, science and way of life.

'Yoga helped me walk again'

dietsinreview

In 2004, two years before he became Chennai mayor, M Subramaniam met with a road accident. "I was told I would never walk properly again and that I would even have trouble sitting," says Subramaniam, who was mayor till 2011. A chance meeting with a yoga teacher led to Subramaniam giving yoga a 'casual' try. "I didn't even know what school of yoga the master came from, just that his stretches and breathing exercises seemed to be working and making me better," says Subramaniam, who has now run 14 half-marathons across the globe in the last couple of years.
Subramaniam became a believer, and when he became mayor, he spearheaded a yoga movement in Chennai, installing yoga platforms in 28 parks across the city as well as making yoga a part of the exercise programme in corporation schools.

'Made be a better human being'

yogajournal

When SK Thanigai Velan returned to his alma mater a decade after he graduated and told his principal he was a value education teacher, they were shocked. In his teens, Velan was one of the biggest bullies. "I failed in class 10 twice. And when I passed, two months into class 11, I was suspended for intimidating a teacher," says Velan, now 35. "I stepped out of school and found a school senior waiting for me. He took me to a yoga institute, where the first thing they taught me was to sit in silence. It was the most difficult exercise for me," he says. Velan then learned pranayama, then returned to school and graduated with 74% in class 12. Yoga didn't just make me a calmer person, says Velan, it made me a better one. He now helps other children "like me who had lost their way", he says.

'After cancer, yoga relieved my stress'

Huffpost

Diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 32, Vedavalli Parthasarathy thought life as she knew it was over. The sales manager and mother of two was depressed when she saw what the illness was doing not just to her body ¡ª hair loss, weight loss, change in the colour of her skin ¡ª but to her mind. "I was depressed and withdrew into a shell," says Vedavalli. Her oncologist asked her to try yoga with her treatment. Thirteen years later, Vedavalli is not just a yoga instructor at Chennai's Satyananda Yoga Center, the school she learned at, but also teaches yoga to people with cancer as well as survivors.

(Originally published in The Times Of India | Images for representational purpose)