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Yoga is yoga. Therefore, it does not matter where you practice. Whether you practice in this yoga center or in other yoga centers, anywhere, yoga is yoga. The difference lies in the yoga teachers: what kind of experiences a particular teacher has made, their way of teaching, and the training they received. Yoga is individual, not general, because every individual has different physical problems or will have physical problems. There are yoga exercises for all different physical issues: for the joints, the veins, the muscles, digestion, the heart, circulation, headache, and so on. The yoga teacher knows which kind of exercise will do good for which person. If you are very healthy and know no such problems, then you are lucky, and I wish you remain healthy at all times. Then yoga becomes for us a prevention. And prevention is far better than treatment or cure. If we keep practicing yoga exercises, then our body will be with us a little longer, and be with us longer in good condition. It is said: health is not everything, but everything is nothing without health. After a certain time, we should be careful with our nourishment, diet, and also with our movements. Exercise is good. Yoga is a science of body, mind, consciousness, and soul. There are three basic principles in yoga. First, the dynamic movements, which are called body-warming exercises and are very important. After these dynamic movements come the counter-postures. If you bend forward, then you should also bend backward. If you bend your head to the right side, then go to the left side. After these dynamic movements comes stretching. One should not stretch without first doing dynamic movements—what we call body warming. Otherwise, you may tear your ligaments, have sore muscles, and say, "Oh, I did yoga, and now for one week I have pain here and there. I will not practice anymore." So it was not the fault of yoga, but we were guilty, or the person who gave us the exercises did not ask you or did not follow the yogic principles. This is not from "Yoga in Daily Life" or any other name of yoga. Yoga is yoga. There is no "yoga in daily life," there is no "yoga of this" or "yoga of that"—it is only yoga. It is like dharma. Some call it religion; we call it dharma. Dharma is more than religion. There is Hindu dharma, Sanātana Dharma, Bauddha Dharma, Christian Dharma, Muslim Dharma. So dharma is dharma, and then there is a sub-name that is different, additional. When we talk about mother, then it is mother. But then comes the second: my mother, his mother, her mother. Then it divides. But that principle, that main thing, is the mother. That is all. There is no title. There is no title. God is God. You cannot say Dr. God, Engineer God, Professor God. No. There is no title. Similarly, yoga. It is yoga. So after body warming or dynamic movements, we have stretching. Stretching should also be done very slowly. Beginners have different exercises, advanced practitioners have different ones. After a few stretching exercises, then come the postures, where you can remain for a while. Those postures will give the real benefit that yoga should give; otherwise, they will not. We want to plant a tree, a nice fruit tree. We bought a tree, but what we did was lay the roots up and put the head of the tree under the earth. Now we are waiting for the tree to give us fruits. I do not know which kind of tree can grow from the head side and give fruits. Similarly, those who are doing headstand or advanced postures too quickly will not gain anything from them. Therefore, we have to go slowly, step by step. In "Yoga in Daily Life," we create a system. It is like from nursery school until university. If someone practices systematically, it is very, very good. After the three movements—what we do in body warming—blood circulation improves and all gland systems become active. Then, stretching opens blockages, letting energy flow freely. Then you sit or hold yourself in the posture, the classical yogic postures, the āsanas. For example, there is one yoga posture, an āsana we call Bhujaṅgāsana. Bhujaṅga is a cobra snake. When you see a cobra somewhere, it suddenly stands up, the front part. Because it feels scared, threatened, in danger, angry, or something, it stands like this and turns a little towards you. If you do nothing and are just standing, it goes down and goes away. In yoga, we have Bhujaṅgāsana. Who does not know Bhujaṅgāsana? This is a good yoga teacher, no? Very good. So, it looks something like this. But this girl is a very advanced practitioner. If you do all this today, having never practiced, then after that I would advise you to go to the orthopedist. Therefore, it should not be immediately forced. This is a fifth level. Each level is practiced for a minimum of three to six months. The beginning is very, very simple. Pūrvottānāsana comes with exercises like this. The snake is lying peacefully. Then comes a little bit like that, and finally comes supporting the hands on the ground. Then you can go more up. These postures, which I saw you just now, strengthen our back muscles. When our back muscles are strong, then you will have no spine problem and no back pain. If your back muscles are not strong enough, then we are always sitting like this. When we sit on a chair like that, these muscles get shortened—the thigh muscles and calf muscles. Then you cannot bend forward to hold your toes. When one brick is taken away, the whole building slowly becomes imbalanced. This Bhujaṅgāsana, the cobra posture, is also in this book, in the last part, but it is a very small picture so you may not see it. If we go according to the science of cakra or Kuṇḍalinī, which you have definitely heard about, then these are the body centers, the energy centers in our body. Every cakra, these energy centers, guides our health, physical body, mental body, subtle body, causal body, our consciousness, our emotions, our way of thinking, our well-being. Everything depends on these energy centers. When you practice Bhujaṅgāsana, you influence the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra, the second cakra from the bottom. You will read also in this book, or you can read in this book here, the Cakra book, Hidden Powers in Humans. Even if you will not practice, read it. It contains great information in very simple language, easy to understand according to the European way of thinking. There are many Sanskrit words, but they are translated immediately. Coming to the point, the Mūlādhāra Cakra is called the center where our ego, anger (krodha), our passion (kāma), our greed (lobha), and our attachment, meaning jealousy, reside. So, Kāma, Krodha, Mada, Lobha, and Moha. These five negative energies can be positive, but still they are as they are. When a cobra snake feels frightened or is aggressive—if someone is in its territory, or if you throw a small stone—immediately the cobra makes and stands up because it feels offended. It feels angry. It feels frightened. Then it stands up. What happens? That posture influences its tail, the last point before the spine ends of the snake. There is the Mūlādhāra Cakra of the snake too. This posture calms down that cakra, and then the snake goes down. So, if you have a problem, or ladies, when your husband is a little bit aggressive, then tell him, "First do cobra pose, then I will talk to you." Then he will be completely different. When we practice Bhujaṅgāsana, immediately we feel calm. Our lungs expand, the whole diaphragm. You have more capacity to inhale or take the air in. Finally, your lungs are nicely opened. When we were born, you know, we inhale, "ah," then the lungs open and you begin to breathe. So it is like a new birth when you slowly do your cobra āsana, Bhujaṅgāsana. You breathe, relax, experience calmness of the mind, contentment, understanding. After that, when you come down, you feel so relaxed. You feel free from certain emotional tensions. Emotions have many, many qualities. Anger is an emotion, jealousy is an emotion, greed is an emotion. Jealousy, hate, laziness—these are all different kinds of emotions. Sadness is an emotion. The practice makes a human think and become relaxed from these emotions. You work very hard all day, and you have a lot of emotion because your colleagues are not always as nice to you as they should be. Or the customers who come are not always like that. Some are complaining, some are saying this, and there are very few who say, "Thank you, it was very nice of you." Many just say, "Do it. Why have you not done it? I'm disappointed. Your work is not good. I will not come anymore to you. I will not order things from you." So, it is not easy to deal with humans. Sometimes it is easier to deal with wild dogs, wild elephants, and wild animals, but humans are the wildest ones. When you come home and you sit in meditation and look: what kind of people, and how many telephone calls, and what was the talk there? My God, your chapter is full of it. Therefore, that creates tension here in the brain, this part of the brain. So, what you do in the practice: you take your three fingers when you are sitting, or in the office also, close the eyes and put the fingers here where the temple is, and slowly massage yourself clockwise. If you do not know exactly the place, then bite your teeth together. When you bite your teeth, then you will feel the muscle pressure here. Did you find it? Try, please. Just biting, like you chew something. Did you find it? This is the place where the tension resides. When we say that I have tension or the whole day tension, I am tired of this tension, or tension from learning or typing, then just for one minute you turn it clockwise—oh, pleasant. I have to admit, there is tension because I met you, and you are such pleasant people. But still, it is very nice. Someone told me today that many sportsmen and many people are doing this, you know, when you are tired and tense, then you release the tension through your ears. These are very old techniques in the schools. When the student does not learn, then the master can hold them, you know. And that was—again we have to come to the old techniques. So you put your palms on your ears, and without rolling ears in the palms, you must go up and down quickly. Like when you go in the bathroom and take the soap and clean, you know. And do you feel? I would say it is much better than drinking scotch, no? My God! And touch your ears, how warm they are. Yes? The shape of our ear is like the embryo in the mother's body. Exactly. The embryo is lying like this. Especially for pregnant women, it is very good for them and for the baby's health, and it will be an easy birth if they do this exercise. Now again, I am stuck on one subject because I have finished one subject, the Bhujaṅgāsana. When you come to Bhujaṅgāsana, the front part of the muscles are all stretching. They are stretching all, including the, how to call them, the gender organs, till the nostrils. Inside, you feel, so you will feel the pulling in the nostrils. For example, when the nose is blocked due to a cold or something similar and it is difficult to breathe, then you do Bhujaṅgāsana and the nostrils will be very open. You do not need sprays. The spray is not good. If you are taking blood thinners, then it is not good at all for you. It may begin bleeding from the nose, and then it is difficult to stop. So, do yoga exercises. Bhujaṅgāsana is very scientific. There is also a problem: females often have a problem when they get menstruation; they have spasms, pain. When you do Bhujaṅgāsana, such stretching comes, and relaxation to the muscles, it disappears. All of you go up once and remain there for half a minute, and you come down, and it is like, oh! Who told yesterday? Someone told somewhere. Yes, I was in the Gurudwara the day before yesterday. You know what is a Gurudwara? The temple from the Sikh, Indian, the Sikh religion. There is one called Guru Nanak Nishkam Seva temple, Gurudwara. He was talking, and very nicely he said, "Look, God made everything without any duality." Let us say, pain. It does not matter if you are a man or woman, human or animal or a bird, it does not matter who or a fish, pain is pain, no? It does not matter from whom you will help to release the pain; that is the greatest thing. I used to say, the person who invented anesthesia to remove the pain, I think he or she, I do not know who, has done a great, great, good karma. Go to the dentist, and now you have a cavity, and the doctor said, "We have to make a filling or do a root treatment." The doctor comes, "Did you eat sweets?" "No, I do not eat so much." "Okay." And then comes drilling a little near it. "Comfort, sugar, did you eat? Oh, yes, I eat sugar." You know, the doctor said, "I think I will give you an injection, and then you can drill or pull out the tooth, everything, no pain." So do in your life one thing that does not cause pain to anyone. It does not matter, the animals or the humans, free them from pain. That is a great achievement in life you can do with this one thing. So, yoga, this exercise, Bhujaṅgāsana, is only this one. Another thing is that your lungs will expand, you will have more volume to inhale, and you will get more oxygen. If you have some kind of asthma, it will help you to release it. It will do good to your thyroid gland, it will do good to your pancreas, it will do good to your Mūlādhāra and Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakras. Now, consider the back side. You see what is happening to the back side of the body, including your buttocks. They are in tension, contracting. Then the muscles very near to the hip joints, and from the end of the spine all the way up along the whole back to the neck muscles, they are all pressed together. They are getting a little bit tense. And then you relax; a flood of blood flows into all these muscles, and all blockages inside open. These muscles, particularly the parallel muscles to the spine, very fine muscles, and under the shoulders, the muscles which are coming to the spine, they all get released from tension and receive more energy to become strong. You will have no back pain. You will walk very easily and very well. If you do slowly, now we do one experiment, okay? You are sleepy? No. Then I will stop. He will say he is talking only. We will do one experiment, okay? Do you have a wristwatch? You can take it off and put it near your feet so that you do not forget. Good. Look at your left palm. Beautiful. Nice. You have good hand lines. Next time I will tell you what it is. Yes, you have a very good hand line too, a little, but that I will not say in front of all, because hand line reading is also a science to know the past, present, and future, and the hand line changes every 10 years. Good, that will be. Maybe next time, as a subject. Okay, now look, your hand like this, beautiful. Now, thumb inside and close your fist tightly. Nice. Okay? With the right hand, you hold your wrist and tighten it. Okay? Only the left palm is open. Look at your left palm, the tip of the fingers, the fingers, the palm. But hold your wrist very tight. Now, look at your palms. What is happening? Do not look anywhere; you will miss it otherwise. Look at your left palm and release your right hand. Did something happen? The color has changed. The hand became lighter. Now we must do it on the right side, because the right hand is offended. My God, jealousy is something. My disciples, they are all full of jealousy always. A jealous man never comes to heaven. A jealous woman can be treated. So again, pump a little bit and hold your right wrist tight and open the palm. What we did is we blocked the circulation. That is all. There is no miracle. There is nothing. We blocked the circulation, and now you will more consciously feel this because we have the experience from the left hand. So slowly release the left hand. Oh, wonderful. Okay. So, how does theory and practice work? I gave the theories, and I gave you the practice of what to do. Now, here in this cold climate, in winter when your hand is freezing and you are waiting for the bus, or your steering wheel of your car is so cold, then what to do quickly? You can do like this and like that. If you do like that, you know, for 10 seconds or 20 seconds, your hand is hot, warm. In our hands, when we practice yoga, these dynamic movements and body warming activate or awaken our body centers, energy centers, glands, and all energy flow. So what we do, we make one more experiment. In this energy we flow when the center is awakened, like a healing, like a healing energy is awakening in our hands. So look at both palms. Yes, they are very nice now, red and nice, relaxed. Muscles, they are very good. Both hands, lines, they are different now than before. It means something changed in your destiny. Now you will practice yoga every day. Now hold your hands like this, look at your palms, the fingertips of the fingers, and you are feeling something creeping, no? There is no miracle. That is only because blood is flowing down. So, no miracles at all. There is no special thing. It is just physical, okay? Circulation. Now, I wish for you that you will feel a thousand times more than now. So feel it now, how much you feel. Okay. Good. Now, hold your hands and feel how much you feel. Good. Remain like this, and now what will we do? We will rub our palms, fingers together, and fingertips come till here, the end of the hand near the wrist, and like this. We have to do it a little quicker until the palms become very hot. You may look down until some fire sparks fall down. The gas cylinder has to be put off, please, otherwise a fire can begin. Yes, one, two, three, four, five, six, do it. It does good to our heart, to our spinal column, to our muscles, hands, everything. Now, stop and hold your hands like this. Do you feel? Fingers together. Now come a little closer. Only a few centimeters apart, the palms. Slowly go near and go far. Do you feel something expanding and contracting? If you make a circle, there is something like needles moving. Now what we do, we close our palms, close the fists, hands down, and say, "Divine energy, Divine Mother, bless me, rest in my hands." Now, that energy which awoke again went to the original position. Open your palms and bring them together. Do you feel that the energies calm down? If you have pain somewhere in the body, you do this exercise and bring your hands near or touch your body, and it will help you use your own bioenergy for healing yourself or for others. Many mothers, the future mothers, automatically before going to sleep or at certain times a day, always put their hand on the stomach, feel the baby, and send energy. So if you do like this and then send energy, it makes a healing process. So, Bhujaṅgāsana, cobra pose—I am talking about only one posture that has a great effect. If you get a cramp in your calf muscles, thigh muscles, or the soles of your feet, of course, there is a lack of some vitamins. But also, there are some problems in the muscles. Through Bhujaṅgāsana, when you do this, muscles are stretching and getting released from certain tensions, so there will be no cramp in the body. Also, the front part of the legs and these shin muscles are all stretched gently. You do not feel it so much because you have done stretching and dynamic movements before. Therefore, holding a posture for half a minute or one minute, remaining in that posture, has more effect than doing it quickly, quickly. This is the difference between theory and practice. First we have to understand the theory, and then, according to that, we practice. So yoga is individual, and if everyone is healthy, then it becomes general. Better is what we call prevention than treatment. To maintain prevention, we have to practice lifelong. Yoga should become a part of our life. Like every day we need to eat, drink, and sleep, similarly, if you take one and a half hours minimum early in the morning, then you are free the whole day. Meditation follows after that, then comes prāṇāyāma, breath. What we did first when we were born: we inhaled, and then what did we do? We cried. Baby, no? Yeah, yeah. "Where am I? Where am I? I do not want to come here in this world." So first, what we did, we inhaled, and what we will do at the last is exhale, and then we will not be able to inhale anymore. So our breath is so long, from birth till the last day of life, death. What is between is only the waves on the ocean from one shore to the other shore. Its length is the ocean, and between are only the waves. These waves can be very calm and peaceful, or they can be like hurricanes, and that is emotion. Through the breath we can control emotion, through the breath we can reduce a lot of toxins from the body, and we can gain calmness of the mind. After that, then comes concentration and meditation. Then you are successful. Otherwise, one time you do physical exercise and then nothing, and then you do meditation and then nothing, and then you go to drink alcohol and then come home and again destroy all the work that you have done in your brain. The brain is saying, "Zzzz." You want to go to sleep, you sleep, and you look at the ceiling, and the ceiling is moving like this, you know, and you feel that, "Oh my God, my bed is falling like this." It is something like that, so that is what we call bhaṅg. You know, when marijuana, ganja, when it is green, many Indians put it in some eatings, or they make a little bowl and put it in the mouth and eat. Once I was in Bihar, and someone gave me some, and then I lost my balance. I was going down, and missed four steps, went down. Then they invited me for satsaṅg, and I was sitting in satsaṅg, and I began to sing one bhajan. All the time I was reading the same line of the bhajan, you know, the same stroke, all the time the same. So they said, "Swāmījī, what to do?" So they gave me something different. Then they said, "Swamiji, you rest." So I went to sleep, and it was full moon. Now I see the moon is turning, and my bed. So I was holding my bed as if I would fall down, and then these people said, "Do not, never give him such a thing, please." Because I never take such things in my life, no? If you take it, you will get used to it. Any kind of drug imbalances your brain centers. That creates an obstacle for your spiritual development and disturbs your emotional life. So we need balance. That is why Yoga in Daily Life is written: harmony for body, mind, and soul. So, practice and theory. Someone said, "Tons of theory are nothing compared with a gram of practice." But I would say there is not even a gram of practice without theory. We need that theory, but correct theory, not just dreaming theories. Authentic ancient literatures by those self-realized yogīs gave us something. If we do according to that, that is like a landmark, a guide for us. That is it.