Billboards, hoardings and a hoard of other promotional and marketing tools have become part and parcel of the newly- developed urban areas in the country. Health and fitness frenzy citizen, especially young male and females impressed by these marketing campaigns don’t hesitate to pay heavy fees to burn extra fats and to remain fit, smart and active.

What excited me most about these fitness centers were the yoga classes offered by the master trainers. My curiosity to explore the worth of these specialised classes took me across the boundaries of research, which ended in meeting with a genuine yoga master Shamshad Haider who has learned yoga from the ancient yogis in Tibet, Nepal and India.

Meeting Shamshad was a wonderful experience, his cool and calm personality with a tucked ponytail was reflective of his in-depth knowledge of yoga. The early morning tranquility at Ayub National Park Rawalpindi added more colours to yoga exercise organized by Shamshad and his wife Shumila at the Baradari. Shamshad who hails from a small town near Mandi Bahaudin is into yoga practice since 1991. Shamshad’s introduction to yoga was accidental when he developed a swear abdomen pain in Saudi Arabia and the doctors advised him surgery. It was through meditation and focus control that he was able to overcome his discomfort without surgery.

Shamshad said that it took him sixteen long years to master the art of Yoga which he mostly learned from his Brume teacher Ehsan Govinka, who lived a healthy life and died at the age of 95 years in 2013. He became very sentimental when asked about the origin of this wonderful art. Shamshad said that there is a grave misunderstanding to relate yoga with Hinduism. The fact is that yoga was evolved about 3000 years ago by a person name Maha Rashi Patangali, who hails from Multan. Patangali discovered the relationship between body, mind and the spirit and documented the traditional postures or Ahsans of yoga in the form of book.

Shamshad while relating the yoga with sports said that yoga can enhance the sporting ability of athletes to many folds. In our sport system the focus is on physical and skill side while the mental fitness of athletes are ignored, said the yogi. It is through yoga that sport persons can achieve state of supreme fitness and flexibility. Yoga also improves tolerance and focusing under pressure. Shamshad said that great achievements in sports can only be attained through relaxed minds and high energy level in which yoga exercises is the key.

While discussing the health benefits of yoga, Shamshad said with great confidence that such interventions can reduce 50% of patient load from hospitals. He said that Indian government is supporting yoga at scale.

Yoga is now being taught in schools and colleges in several towns and villages through a movement headed by Ram Dave a yogi of international repute.

According to Shoib Hamid who is himself a yoga teacher and student of Shamshad, there are 84,000 poses in yoga and sixty different ways of breathing and meditation. Shamshad has, however, divided yoga exercises into three main parts for the ease of students.

The first part of yoga is Meditation or dhayan. Dhayan teaches us to focus on our present state. Human beings by nature tend to live in past or future. This state of mind is not very good for our physical or psychological health because we can nether mend our past or jump into the future. This tendency of living in past or future adds unnecessary pressure on the sportsperson. The players can easily stop this unnecessary thought process which triggers anxiety through meditation and improve their performance in the present state.

The second most important part of yoga is Breathing or Pran. Breathing in yoga is not the ordinary breathing of oxygen, but it is the energy that moves the life. It teaches you how to breathe correctly and deeply to nourish all organs of body. Breath control in yoga is also called Anatan. While relating breath control with spiritualism, Shamshad reviled that recitation of Allah ho with breath work is even very common and extremely effective with non- Muslims in many yoga centers across the world.

Shumaila, Shamshad’s wife while sharing her experience on breath control told me that at one stage she was herself asthmatic and her respiratory system had gone very weak. The problem grew to an extent that she was hospitalised and doctors gave her a load of medicines and inhalers which she tried for several months without significant improvement.

The third part of yoga is physical posture or Ahsan as they call it in yoga terminology. In yoga human body is considered as a temple said Shamshad. Yoga exercises are meant to transform the body being into energy being. These exercises not only make your body flexible and supple but also release tension and prepare us to face the challenges in life or before any crucial match.

Yoga is in fact a way of life and an art of exploring the hidden qualities of athlete within the body, mind and the spirit.

The sportsperson can easily learn Rag Yog, Pranyam Yog and Kundilini Yog to master the art of yoga and easily reach to the international Salutogenesis model of health that talks about the sense of coherence, making people better equipped to face the daunting challenges of life and sports.

The World Health Organisation, the American College of Sport Medicine and the American Heart Association recommends 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise five days a week or 20 minutes of intense aerobic exercise three days week and complementing it with muscle strength and endurance work at least once or twice a week.

Shamshad is of the opinion that if athletes and common fitness freaks adopt yoga as part of lifestyle, it will not only help them in attaining great physical shape but it will also keep their body flexible with a cutting edge in breath and focus control to surpass their opponents.

I had the opportunity to interact with number of students that had come to attend yoga classes. Mr Tufail a practicing dental surgeon age 55 years said that yoga has renewed his life. Fasih Bokhari has come out of a depressive phase in his life through yoga and Mohammad Rafi who is fifty one years of age doesn’t look more than thirty and attributes his youthfulness to yoga.

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