YOGA AND MEDICINE

Articles In This Section:

· HOW OFTEN DO WE GET SICK?

· EXPRESSING FRUSTRATIONS

· YOGA AND MEDICINE

· YOGA EXERCISE

· SELFKNOLEDGE OF YOGA

Now let us listen to the anguished cry of the patient who seeks the help of an analyst: What is he after as he lies down on the green couch? Here again the overall, meaningless answer is happiness. Pinpointed, this means peace of mind, a sense of balance, a sense of belonging, the ability to live with himself and with others.

The analyst listens with an objectivity to which he has been trained, then slowly tries to help the patient see himself objectively too. This generally turns out to be a slow, difficult process; the cost, in financial as well as emotional disbursement, exorbitant. It often takes years to re-educate and reorient the psyche, largely because we all resist honest insights which are apt to be both unflattering and painful.

The patient study of Yoga can often produce the same results much more quickly and at less cost. But the path of attainment is very different indeed.

Here, however, it is important to make very clear to the reader that we are not counter-posing the two methods on an either-or basis. Certainly it would be both dangerous and foolhardy, if you were feeling ill, to decide for yourself whether or not your symptoms were real or mentally-induced. Such decisions are best left to a competent doctor. The same holds true for cases of severe mental stress; it would be throwing out the baby with the bath to turn one's back on techniques which modern science has made available to us. Remember, Yoga does not decry medicine. It does not turn its back on plain common sense. Certainly it is not a form of faith healing. But it has its own ways of dealing with inner turmoil which, for want of a more concrete name, we might call soul-sickness. Over the centuries it has discovered and learned to utilize age-old truths and a combined knowledge of body and mind which modern medicine and Sigmund Freud have only recently concretized for the West.

Do not think that even in India the path of the Yogi disciple, the Chela, is easy. We are told that often people seek out a personal Guru not for wisdom, but in order to gratify some inner weakness. They want him for the purpose of self-escape. They hope to pass on to him their own burden of cares or responsibilities, thereby making life simple and easy, precisely as some Westerners seek a father-confessor and others an analyst. But neither in the West nor in the East is there any easy road to wisdom.

Like the patient on the couch, the student of Yoga makes progress only as he takes upon himself alone the responsibility for learning. Unlike the man or woman in analysis, he starts with the physical, then progresses to controlling the mind. Take as an example the basic exercises in concentration and the way these may eventually be utilized for self-knowledge.