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Good morning. How are you? How was your morning? There are certain principles for teaching yoga. Our way of teaching, learning, and applying this principle of yoga in daily life is guided by our first and foremost motto: physical, mental, social, and spiritual health. Harmony—the harmony of body, mind, and soul. This is our motto. So always keep in mind the system of yoga and life, our motto and principle: physical, mental, social, and spiritual health, and the harmony of body, mind, and soul. We achieve this through yoga in daily life. Yoga in daily life is not just like bubbles. It is not like a flood that comes and recedes. It is not like an emotional fire. We must always concentrate and give the best instructions to our students. We have to start from the beginning, from nursery school. You should be able to practice and demonstrate. You may have practiced in other schools, but now you are in a proper school, from nursery until university. It takes time to train yourself. Many students have physical problems, but practice makes perfect. By chance, I saw a lady on Facebook; I do not know from which country she is. She had double or triple the weight, yet she could twist and perform all postures like rubber. So why can't we? Her husband said that even at night, she gets up and does these movements. To practice, to practice, to practice. There is a little story in the Mahābhārata. The Pāṇḍavas and Kauravas went to a school for royal people. Among the five Pāṇḍava brothers, one was called Bhīma, and he was always hungry. He used to eat food for about 15 or maybe 40 people. He was always hungry and would go to the kitchen at midnight to see if there was anything to eat. There was no light in the kitchen, or else people would know someone was there. He would feel around to see if a chapati or rice was left, find it, and eat it. His brother Arjuna woke up one day and wondered, "Where does my brother always go?" One day he followed him and found him in the kitchen. He said, "What are you doing here, Bhīma?" Bhīma said, "Silent. Arjuna, come and eat also." But Arjuna said, "How can you eat in the dark?" Bhīma replied, "Brother, this is a training. Even in the dark or with closed eyes, the hand goes there automatically." Arjuna asked, "How is it possible?" The answer was: practice. So Arjuna learned a lesson. Aha, practice. Consequently, Arjuna used to go at night to practice his archery. Thus it is said: "Abhyāsa, Abhyāsa, O Kuntī Putra, Abhyāsa, Abhyāsa." Practice, practice, O son of Kuntī, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect. This is our second mantra. Write it in your room, on your bathroom door, and on your mirror: "Practice, practice, practice. Practice, O Kuntī Putra, O son of Kuntī, practice, practice." Practice makes perfect, so you must now take this saṅkalpa: Abhyāsa, abhyāsa, abhyāsa. After your class, you should go anywhere under the trees and practice. When we say good night, go into the garden if it is not raining and practice in the dark. Try in deep darkness if you can practice the butterfly pose. Begin with that so you know where your knee is and if you can hold your toes. Practice this for one week. You have to make yourself very soft, like making bread dough or chapati dough. With chapati flour, water, a little salt, you squeeze and squeeze. One saint, Kabīr Dās, was walking through the street and saw a person making pots out of clay. The potter goes to the forest or a lake or pond where there is black soil, brings this black clay, dries it, filters it if it is wet, then mixes it with water like a doll, squishing, throwing it up and down, rolling, twisting, torturing it. Kabīr Dās was looking, suddenly concentrating deeply. When you concentrate, even this pot will speak to you. You will hear the trees, the forest, the earth, the water. So Kabīr Dās was listening to what this clay tells the potter. (Now, I must make a correction; I do not know if it is a Kabīrdās poem or somebody else's.) He listened as the poet analyzed the process. The clay said to the potter: "Oh potter, though you can torture me, one day will come when I will torture you." What does this mean? Now you are torturing me, but one day when you die and are buried in the earth—and I am that clay—then I will torture you under the earth. All your bones and muscles and everything, I will turn into earth. Wait, the time will come. Likewise, one has to learn. Your practice will make you perfect, but you are not torturing your body; you are training it. In this one week, you should know—it is called, what it means—you will realize, you will learn, you will feel what it means to have the soul. Muscles. That is it. I want to see tomorrow how you are walking on the staircase with your sore muscles. So practice abhyāsa. We have to make perfect āsana training. The water in our body is very important, but it must be balanced. If water comes into your lungs, knees, or different parts of the body, it can kill you, disturb you, and hurt you. If you take all the water out of the body, you die. So we should know the balance and how to keep everything in balance in the body. The same applies to prāṇa. Let us say, the air, the oxygen. We have these elements in our body. Prāṇa needs space, and that space is known as the space of tolerance. Sometimes we say tolerance should not be flexible, meaning no forgiveness. If you have tolerance, then you have it one hundred percent. But in mechanism, you must have tolerance, and therefore there is ākāśa, space. For the water, for the muscles, for the air, for nourishment, we need space. If everything is compact, like concrete, you cannot move or talk. Even the small finger needs tolerance; otherwise, you cannot move. Our prāṇa, our oxygen, needs clean air. Through prāṇāyāma, we shall reduce all the toxins. The earth, water, air, and fire—our body is full of fire. Constantly, fire is burning. Within you, you have a chimney, and that chimney is constantly burning your body. The smoke comes out as a toxin through prāṇāyāma. But this must also be very nicely regulated. Like in winter, we have a heater tuned to only 20 degrees. Or when you go on holiday, you set it to seven degrees so the water does not freeze and the plants do not die. When we are inside, we can have 20 or 25 degrees, as you like. So the earth, prāṇa, water, space, and fire are within our body. How to balance them, we do not know. But the one thing we can know is that we practice yoga, and then we balance this. If you do too much, it can harm your body. Young people of 18, 20, 25, 30 years are like rubber. But ask someone who is 80 years old and wants to be healthy. For them, what does yoga mean? What they do is the real yoga. Therefore, our system of Yoga in Daily Life is so systematic. It looks simple, but it is not. You know, being gentle is more effective. Sometimes, one who likes to speak to you is very sweet but says no. You ask again, "But why not?" and he says, "No, okay." Then, when they begin to drive the car, "But why can't you do it?" He says, "No, it's okay," and then stops the car and goes somewhere. But I think it is good that you should do it. Then the man said, "You are getting on my nerves, you are the saw of the nerves." Nerve and saw, that is it. So that kills you inwardly. Therefore, you have to pay attention. Yoga and life exercises are very slow and gentle. But those who do not know and are watching may feel it is like a saw for the nerves. I had a visitor just one hour ago; he is a doctor of rehabilitation who also lectures at the university. He is from Czeskie Toplice. Every time he comes, he gives me very nice examples. They conducted research on Bhujaṅgāsana, and the best result was from Yoga in Daily Life—how it affects our muscles, nerves, spine, etc. This was published in a scientific magazine in Slovakia, which is controlled by PISOV of Slovakia (Ah, Biskupom Slovenska). From Levoča, nearby, I think Spišská Nová Ves or so on. He was very against Yoga in Daily Life. I do not want to tell more. When Swamiji comes, it is like a red carpet. But the research work on Yoga in Daily Life was appreciated very much and published in that scientific magazine. That doctor, Dr. Chelko, spoke about Bhujaṅgāsana. If you go to the maximum, twisting your spine and leaning back, it has little physical effect and causes more harm to the spine. In their research, a few doctors—who did not know each other—studied our Bhujaṅgāsana technique, which we teach: go slowly up, not too long, not too much bending. The movement up takes five seconds, then hold for fifteen seconds. After fifteen seconds, the muscles will not accept any more blood circulation. Then take ten seconds to come back. So: going up five, holding fifteen, coming back ten seconds. The muscles react quickly, blood goes out, and the muscles remain for 15 seconds without that much blood in the affected muscles. You are blocking the blood. Then, for ten seconds, you go slowly and release the muscle. How does the blood come back? Relax for five seconds. If you want to get rid of back pain and have strong back muscles, the best way is to do Bhujaṅgāsana on a certain level. In the old days, if you wanted to destroy your spine, then twist as much as you like. We often demonstrate by closing the fist. Look at your hand and slowly close the fist tight, tighter, tighter. You stop the blood. If you open it, the blood will run. So we block it and observe the experiment. Count fifteen seconds, then release. What happens? Let us do it once more. Look at your palm, slowly tuck the thumb in and close your fist very strong and tight. To demonstrate, hold your wrist tightly, then slowly open the palm and look at it. Fifteen seconds: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. Now slowly release the wrist but look at your palm. The same reaction or effect occurs on our back muscles. Then your back muscles will be very strong, and there will be no problem—unless your ribs are replaced. Likewise, we have to learn Yoga in Daily Life again. You should explain this to your students. For young children, you can give them slightly different exercises, but you can keep them in these postures for a while. You will know how hard it is. Young children have no feeling to stay longer. Today a chelā said to me, "This is a very simple exercise." It is very simple. We have in our book an exercise called Mṛgaśayana, the deer. One lies down on the stomach, relaxed on a bed or yoga mat, holding the chin. It is very relaxed. Then, very slowly, bend the knees. You can demonstrate. This is comfortable. Now, one after the other, try to bring the legs as close as you can. You can look at your iPad to read what you want—the Mahābhārata or the Mahāśivapurāṇa—for 30 minutes, half an hour. You will see tomorrow that your thigh muscles are sore and have become strong. When you bend the knee and then slowly stretch it again, the thigh muscles act like a blocking gear, supporting the leg to go slowly. So your thigh muscles will become very strong without running, and the calf muscles too. Thank you. Try it; if not half an hour, then five minutes. Then you will like it very much. He will do ten minutes. What I want to tell you is: simple is more effective, especially for older people. Then there is prāṇāyāma. We should be very careful with prāṇāyāma. If you want to benefit, learn from the beginning: Candra Vedanā, Sūrya Vedanā, long, for one month. Then Candra Śodhana and Sūrya Śodhana. Inhale through the left, exhale through the right. Inhale through the right, exhale through the left. Oh, it is great. This is how Yoga in Daily Life affects you. After a certain level, you come to more advanced practices. We already have our curriculum, and you will get this to work. Then you will have a proper yoga teaching certificate or diploma. Yoga teaching means you are doing some good karma. It is called puṇya, and puṇya means good against the bad. That is very, very good. Then human awareness will always be alert. So prāṇāyāma is more important and more helpful than the āsanas. Thus, our physical part of Yoga in Daily Life you have to learn by heart, and it will be good. This afternoon, we will form groups. It does not matter from which country you are. It will give you immense peace. After that, we will come to how to lead the meditation in Yoga Nidrā. Today's session is finished.