Can yoga be the answer to all your problems? Read to find out.

An exclusive interview with Dr H. R. Nagendra, chancellor of S.VYASA, Bangalore about how yoga can help you scientifically.

Yoga has become a very popular form of exercise worldwide. It's not just a physical exercise, but also helps you stay calm and de-stress. Dr H.R. Nagendra, Chancellor at S.VYASA, Bangalore, former space scientist at NASA, speaks about yoga and how his research centre is constantly working towards scientifically proving the results or benefits of yoga.

How do you bring integration in your day to day life?

By practising yoga every day! In fact, we have spoken to many schools and managed to make yoga compulsory for class six to 12 students. Around 14 lakh educators get trained in yoga every year. We are also planning to integrate yoga into universities.

People perceive yoga as a physical exercise and are unaware of the fact that it transforms you mentally too. How do you plan to change that?

That used to be a very common perception. However, people understand now that meditation and yoga brings about mental peace. We have students coming in from different parts of the world. Over 30 crores of people worldwide now practice yoga. The impression that yoga is just physical exercise is definitely changing.

Any plans for launching more branches of S.VYASA in India?

We offer many distant education programmes and aim at spreading the knowledge of yoga. We are planning to launch a university in Andhra Pradesh and Los Angeles. The education curriculum at both these places will be the same.

Even though people seek home remedies, they first go to an allopathic doctor and only then turn to alternative medicines. How do you plan to change this?

Once people see the results, they will believe in yoga and how much it can benefit you. People go for allopathy because it gives you immediate relief, but there are a lot of side effects. To get rid of one side effect, you take another pill and then the cycle continues. When people have started realising that this is going to be the pattern, they turn to alternative medicines. When they come here, they get the results in two days. Only once you show the results will people believe in it.

How is the diagnosis done? Who does it?

The doctors here are trained in holistic vision. We have yoga instruments that measure the different koshas to detect problems in the body. It is very inexpensive compared to modern diagnostics. Even pre-diagnosis becomes possible due to the technology we have here. You think you are healthy, but then you find chronic imbalances in the tests. It helps in preventing a lot of diseases and conditions.

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