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Saturday, 20 June 2015

My Story - On the International Yoga day

In this blog , I would like to share my personal story and the powerful influence of yoga in my life.
My Short Story - My driving force - Where I come from….

I belong to a very humble family from a remote town of Tamil Nadu. As per my parent wishes, in the mid 80’s; I joined a reputed engineering college from which many popular personalities such as the former president Abdul Kalam had graduated. I built up my wonderful engineering career in Tatas in the late 80’s and moved on to Singapore, Belgium & Britain to expand my exposure in the engineering field. I roamed around the world covering half the countries in the world map for about 2 decades. Finally, I returned back to India in search of my lost identity in the year 03 & helped MNCs to set up businesses in the famous IT hubs of Bangalore. As a person in the industry, I was very aggressive, a ‘go-getter’ & a very rational minded fellow, ready to jump in and risk myself to generate revenue for the business. 

As a byproduct of the above development, I had a handsome pay cheque which was multifold by industry standards in comparison to that of similar people in the same profession. I had a hefty bank balance, complete financial freedom, cars, great villas in Bangalore and other places & other perks like club memberships etc, offered in the society because of my corporate title. Another byproduct was on my Health condition which initially appeared to me as a nasty setback but after few years, I realized that it was nothing but a blessing in disguise. My bad health darkened my world by 87%. Yes, you guessed it correctly. I started developing a bad hazy poor eye sight because of the malfunctioning of my human internal engineering system. This happened to me to setup a beautiful platform to experience the ‘liveliness’ of life.
My regular routine of meeting the same kind of people, thinking the same kind of thoughts, and doing the same kind of stuff had conditioned my mind in a way that created the environment which was always a WIN in the business. But, it was a terrible LOSS to my health. Family, friends, society & parents have created a ‘default’ path because of their conditioning and we all believe that the secret to become successful is to follow the path that has already been set: Going to a good college, getting a great GPAs, becoming an employee of some great company, building your own mansion, raising your kids with all kinds of facilities & living happily ever after. So, due to this conditioning, I started following the same path and landed in a conflicting ‘nowhere zone’ .In spite of this development, I set the same path for my kids, raised my daughters, put them in great schools, expected great grades from them, let them get employed & married to someone who is most probably again a product of this ‘default’ path as well. This model of living has been passed on from generation to generation and thus, has been imposed on us, Now, the question is – “Has this given us the kind of happiness which we are really looking for?”

In my opinion, the answer is a definite NO, at least based on my experience. This is because; this is an externally forced goal which has been set on me and which honestly led me nowhere. Now, I have realized that this is a conditioned state that has been imposed on us by the society. Otherwise, almost all of us who follow this conventional model would have by default lived happily every day.
As the platform established firmly for me, I started changing my priorities in my life and had set a STRONG DESIRE to become Healthy. I started looking around and used every resource available at that time to get the right solution. I spent a lot of time researching on the human body, its physiology & psychology aspects and I continued to dig deeper into these areas; only one thing had become very clear to me. “ This human system is DAMN complicated . “So, my inner energy guided me to follow the holistic approach and that was the reason, I picked up this 5000 years old ancient wisdom called Yoga. Initially, when someone explained about chakras, it was like an alien language & didn’t make any sense to me. As I explored further, I realized that these chakras are located exactly where the endocrine glands are present. As known to you, these glands control the entire hormonal system. Medical science evolved just a few hundred years ago but yogic science had identified this concept thousands of years ago. This had really BLOWN AWAY my mind and set the rhythm to go deeper into this science. As I explored & practiced further, the interaction of the body & the mind, the play of emotions & feelings became crystal clear to me. As I continued further the practices, tremendous changes happened within me. 
“DESIRE should be really STRONG for a change to happen. Again, I repeat the word STRONG”
“Pick the goodness of whatever offered from outside but go by the internal force which originates from you. Things WORK GREAT.” 

Within a period of few months, my excessive weight (close to 30Kg) radiated out into the space & I had become lighter. My inner world changed dramatically leading to the magnificent changes in my perception of the external world. It was like a BIG LEAP JUMP & all of a sudden, I was in a state of expansiveness and thrown to live in a completely different world. People around me, my neighbours & friends started to see difference in my external appearance. Some general questions from them were,” How have you changed?”  What is the secret?  How have you become younger?  How did you change your grey hair to black? , Some said, “You are a damn lucky person”. But, what they failed to notice were my invisible INTERNAL CHANGES. Day by day, I started experiencing tremendous happiness, my immunity system boosted up multifold and words like ‘doctor’ & ‘disease’ lost its meaning in me. I started experiencing multifold increase in my wealth and health & many different people from different walks of life (from taxi driver to CFO, MDs of the companies) started coming to me. As I started to see a very different world around me because of the goodness which people brought to me & hence, I started to experience MERE BLISS.  
Again back to the topic of ‘conditioned Model ‘ , as I live now, I can say that at least from my experience, it is not an ideal model ,as happiness is not at the end of the journey as depicted but is in the experience of the journey itself. The actual goal of human being is experiencing each and every moment of life, understanding the value of each brand new day as it unfolds & living to his highest potential by understanding and experiencing the true meaning & purpose of life. My goals have been sharply redefined after my transformation & all of a sudden life’s mission has become crystal clear in HIGH DEFINITION to me. For the first time in life, I felt a razor sharp focus that has generated every day, avalanche of goodness not only in my life but in the life’s of people around me. I have now realized that happiness is an innate state of my being itself and is etched clearly in my DNA.   
“Changes in my internal world and my mindset have changed my body, health & so my external reality.” 
“Whatever changes we try to do to the body, on the long run body always WIN& get back to equilibrium. So, just align to this higher intelligence which governs the body.”
My journey still continues. I don’t know how the destination is going to be at the end and I don’t really care about that but all I know now for sure is that the journey is beautiful. Please visit http://www.gigayoga.com/aboutus.html to read my transformations at Physical, mental & emotional Levels.  
My core values & belief systems have changed dramatically because of the above transformation. Let me summarise here my learning, values & my faith in few lines.
1. STRONG desire is important for a CHANGE. 2. Use the goodness of whatever offered from outside but go by the internal force which originates from me. Things WORK GREAT. Let the external flow or the force of the society not influence me. 3. Changes in my internal world and my mindset have changed my body, health & so my external reality. 4. Human system, especially the internal stuff is damn complicated. It is a life long journey to explore this human machine & is very fascinating. 5. Whatever we do, on the long run the winner is higher intelligence. So, just align to this higher intelligence. 6. Happiness is our true nature of our ‘self’ but we were taught to look for the favorable result on every outcome of our actions to become happy. When the expected outcome is not conducive, we become sad. The locus of happiness is internal. 7. Life is so short. We live only 29,000 days of our life out of billion years of human evolution. So, I live everyday to my best so that I move one step closer to my clear well focused goal, making my existence meaningful & purposeful. 8. If I do the same stuff, same work, deal with same people, think the same type of thoughts then I get the SAME RESULT. My thought process has evolved for good, I am now engaged in work which I always have loved to do & I am meeting wide varieties of people from different backgrounds. This is really a GOOD STUFF. 
“My thought process has evolved for good. I am now engaged in work which I have always loved to do & I am meeting wide varieties of people. This is really a GOOD STUFF.” 
As I complete this write-up with thanks to both my daughters for correcting my erratic English, I wish to express a BIG thanks to the saints who had taken Yoga to the western world in the early 19th century. Yoga has reached the length & breath of the world just because of the extraordinary marketing capability of the western world especially America. Because of them, Yoga had reached my ignorant mind at that time when I was badly in need of a solution otherwise yoga would have lived in India as a hidden treasure known only to a handful of people. I am pretty sure that in India the land of wisdom, has many more such hidden treasures which are beyond the reach of the common man. Big question: Where are the marketing teams for the other hidden treasures to get exposed? But, all I can say for sure now is that I am damn lucky that my soul has taken a root in this present birth in the land of great ancient wisdoms. 
So, join in and take the incredible path to this great journey &I can say that this is really GREAT STUFF. JUST GO FOR IT to create a more meaningful, Healthier& happier life. I AM WITH YOU ON THIS JOURNEY.  

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