 Namaste, welcome to the 15th session of this course of Yoga and Positive Psychology for Managing Career and Life. In this session, we are going to discuss asanas, asanas as the intervention for managing self and career. You might recall in the last session, we discussed about this framework of intervention, yoga and positive psychology we are looking at from the perspective of self development and for the self development, we are going to discuss some interventions. These interventions are identified with respect to the different layers of self as described in the notion of Panchakoshas. So, in the Anvayakoshas, we are going to discuss two interventions ahar and asanas. You may also recall that in the last session, we discussed about qualities of food and how food can be a major intervention for our well-being which in turn result in managing our self and our career better. So, we discussed about the qualities of food and how different prakritis are apt for different types of food etcetera. In this session, we are going to talk about asanas. Before we discuss about asanas, let us look at what is the health situation at workplace. So, there are two studies from these two research ah papers, we are going to look at. First paper of Padma and her colleagues, it talks about the health problem and the types of health problem ah prevailing in Indian workforce and it says that around 56 percent of the people they surveyed across India had new musculoskeletal symptoms, around 56 percent of the total people surveyed in India ah they had musculoskeletal systems. So, some ailments related to muscles and skeletal system 22 percent had newly diagnosed hypertension, 10 percent has diabetes, 36 percent had dysyplidemia, 54 percent had depression, some sign of depression, anxiety and insomnia and 40 percent had obesity. Musculoskeletal symptoms included cervical and lumbar strains with or without this disease ah polyantheglia and the muscle spasm and the heel pain. In another study, it is found that back pain is still the leading cause of sickness absence. Job related stress has an impact on productivity and work ability that has been demonstrated to have the significant predictive value for disability and early retirement. Back pain and job related stress are interrelated and both have an independent and possibly ah negative synergistic effect on work ability. Consequently, workplace health promotion interventions to reduce the impact of back pain and stress perception on work ability should target both physical and psychological dimensions. We can see that the problems related to health are majorly about ah musculoskeletal systems and that has a clear connection with the sitting posture or in general postures ah we have at workplace that is why asanas are very important to address this problem. However, we must remind ourselves definition of mind. We discussed in the previous session the definition of mind given by a C. Gallin colleague says that human mind is a relational embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information. You might also recall that we ah looked at the different components of this definition of mind and we juxtaposed that with the 5 koshas of the human self. So, mind is embodied process it regulates the flow of energy and that is related to ah gross body and energy related aspect is related to the sheath of the ah subtle energy. So, ah asanas have to be looked at not just physical intervention. Asanas have as much impact on mind as our thoughts can have impact on our overall experience of life and as much they are reflections of mind. At the outset for this session I wish to acknowledge these two masters Dr. Stephen Parker ah for his book Clearing the Path and Dr. David Frawley ah for his book Yog and Ayurveda. Asanas ah in nutshell reduce the aches sudden pains and hard palpitation ah. It reduces the internal friction of the subsystems and subsystems within our body systematic patterns, bands and stretches which are part of asanas they lubricate the system and make it flexible. Regular practice of asanas ah enhances the feeling of energy it slow down the breathing rate it tunes the body and regain the inner rhyme. This also results in better sleep which is sounder and more efficient. In fact, the very first studies of impact of yoga actually looked at the impact of yoga asanas on quality of sleep. Asanas help keep the body supple and strong while energizing the mind and boosting self confidence. So, you can see that asanas are performed at physical level they are most evident at physical level, but they also have great impact on the quality of the mind and quality of our day to day experience. Doing asanas on a regular basis has been shown to enhance brain wave coherence and improve functions such as memory and intelligence. It lowers the stress related hormones in the body and it increases both mental and physical performance. Asanas also contribute to emotional stability how it contributes it contributes to emotional stability by increasing the amount of neurotransmitters such as serotonin in the body which is known to induce good mood and sense of happiness. Not surprisingly asanas are great intervention for positive psychology. To understand this in more detail we need to look at the connection of body, physicality, emotions, quality of mind and how it is connected to our day to day general experience of life. We need to understand that body is a physical structure within which our habits dwell and lived out. This is the beautiful explanation given by professor Stephen Parker. So, we can look at our posture. So asanas are posture not only for few moments asanas are posture for life. So just reflect on our posture for example is standing posture when we are standing is it solid balanced aligned relaxed so that there is no fatigue or we have tendency to lock our knees in tension. While standing do I sink my chest downward so that our shoulder seem to carry the weight of the world throwing your lower back out of alignment and causing your head to droop forward and muscles in the neck to become tight enough to give you headache. That is what Stephen Parker asked in this chapter on asanas. So asanas have to be looked at general posture of life as well why it is important. Why posture is important? Why we need to look at body posture so closely and how they are deeply connected to our experience of well being which in turn result in managing self and which in turn has impact on managing our career. So many forms of body work actually try to create awareness of this kind of body armor and help to learn new habits. We learn to dwell or we indulge into different thoughts and those liking and disliking are called asanas in the yogic literature that likes and dislike is reflected in the body in different ways. So asanas should be looked at as a way of exploring the very deep aspect of the self also dwelling in the flesh and fabric of our lives. So we use central skill of yoga the application of mindful awareness to conduct the exploration. Yogasanas can help us to integrate every aspect of our nervous system including our emotional experience, sensation, cognition, motivation and sanskar the deep rooted pattern of thoughts which result in to pattern of behavior which result in to pattern of situation we keep finding around ourselves in our day to day life. It is useful to quickly compare yoga and particularly asanas with the exercise the physical exercise the component of asana in the yoga is parallel to the physiological aspect of consisting bending, stretching, strengthening and holding a specific position. So to that extent asanas are similar to exercise however yoga and asanas themselves they render health benefit that are similar to exercise but also go beyond it. So yoga practice are actually driven by goal of experiencing the calmness of mind by performing the physical posture. That is done with the breath regulation and that requires a meditative state that requires full attention to the activity full attention to the moment we are doing. So if we have a quick comparison of the yoga and particularly yoga asanas and exercise we can compare these two things on the metacognition aspect, energy aspect and oxidative stress aspect. Yoga is a metacognition that denotes an aspect that makes you different from various forms of exercise. What is metacognition? Metacognition of knowing the process of knowing. Yoga practice aimed at building our metacognition because of the mindfulness nature of the practice of asanas. Because of the need to observe ourselves while performing asanas it enhances our metacognitivability. Exercise generally does not have that requirement, paying attention is not very important aspect in the exercise and that is why you must have seen that people keep listening music or keep talking and it is very much allowed in the regime of performing any exercises. Second aspect is energy. So, yoga practice actually facilitates the energy conservation that it does by economical utilization of energy for mental and physical benefits. In the exercise we cause the energy utilization to support the body for physical exertion and its metabolic needs. So, in the exercise we utilize energy and the aim is to enhance the physical exertion. Third aspect is oxidative stress because asanas have this meditative element into it, meditation practice induce the uniform change in the biomarkers and that in turn result into uniform change in the behavior and that in turn is reflected in the improved cognitive performance and decreased oxidative stress. Whereas exercise lead to erratic changes in the biomarker because it does not have the meditative element in it.