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Despite a host of celebrity gurus plus a wide variety of instructional videos and CDs on yoga, Indians are still not ready to embrace the ancient practice, relying instead more on medicines for cures to various ailments, says noted yoga exponent B K S Iyengar.
At a time when various exponents from Baba Ramdev to Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty are propagating their own styles of the art of breathing, people here are not paying heed to the ancient practice, feels Iyengar, also known as 'Guruji'.
India, considered to be the birthplace of the ancient art of yoga, is still lagging behind in the practice claims the guru, who has made Iyengar yoga a celebrated name worldwide.
The 90-plus Padma Vibushan awardee says: "In India, there are more people who are drug addicts, I mean those addicted to medicines. Everybody wants to take medicines for their ailments. This is not so when compared to those in western countries where they have taken to yoga."
He claims that the regular practice of Iyengar Yoga can cure even those afflicted with extremely serious medical conditions and is known to use various props such as belts, ropes and wooden gadgets to make the performance of asanas easy for physical handicapped patients.
When asked about various controversies that is currently plaguing the ancient practice.
"There is no controversy about my form of yoga, 20 million students across the world. There may be many practitioners today but yoga is one. The trunk of the tree is one there may be many branches," says Iyengar.
The guru agrees that of late commercial interests are invading the domain but he dismisses them as inevitable saying all yoga is one.
"Yes there is commercialism but the method is not different. All you require is the heart," says the man who was featured by Time magazine as one of the 100 influential persons in the world.
He was in New Delhi recently to inaugurate a state of the art centre for yoga headed by Nivedita Joshi, daughter of former HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi.
"Yoga supplies energy to the entire system and keeps the alimentary canal clean. It brings union between the mind and the body. It develops skilfulness and a way of thinking that frees the body of afflictions that cause health problems," he says.
Born in Bellur, Karnataka, Iyengar, who was a patient of tuberculosis, took to yoga by chance. "After ten years of practice, it became a mission in my life. It is a chance that I took to yoga and a chance that I was called to became a yoga teacher. I converted this chance into choice," he says.
The message that he propagates is that a life without medicine is possible and the key to permanent health saving account lies in the practise of yoga.
"I have been practising yoga for the past 80 years. I was a patient of tuberculosis and there was no medicine for the disease at that time, I took to yoga and after 10 years of yogic practice it then became a mission in my life."
The veteran teacher, who divides his time between Pune and abroad, says: "The body is the temple of the mind and this capital is given by God it is our bounden duty to take care of this."