The healthier, long living, starving yogis

June 24th, 2006

As a child I always looked at yoga and ayurveda with disdain – a bunch of some stupid exercises and some dubious concoctions that made you feel ill just at their mere sight. I remember there was this very old gentleman who used to visit us for an evening chat with my dad. He used to finish off the whole packet of biscuits with the tea served to him and then would expect us to serve him with dinner as well.

Those were good old days of hospitality and my parents always took care of him and would send him home after a hearty dinner. This became almost a routine. So every second or third day he was expected.

Since I did not like him very much I once asked him contemptuously why he visited us so often. He was very frank – I am very poor and alone, so I come here to meet you all and have food. He said he skipped his meals for two to three days and he was not affected because he was a yogi. So he would eat only twice a week. The first thing that came to my mind was that he was talking rubbish. I told him that he was kidding. He smiled at me and kept quiet.

He told my parents that he had no work and his only son could not afford to take care of him. So all he did was experiment with yoga. He said he was working on a solution to hunger other than food. For me he was a major laughing stock and a joke which I shared with my friends. We all planned that I would go and live with him for at least couple of days to know the real story.

The old man was very welcoming and for two days he gave me a rundown on yoga, which I found sickening. He would accompany me to a nearby restaurant and sit with me watching while I had food. He did not eat himself. I remember that he promised to pay the restaurant owner later as he had no money. I spent those two days with open eyes as I was on a serious investigation. The old man had no clue on the purpose of my visit nor did he bother to ask.

On the morning of the third day he accompanied me back to my home. There he had a hearty lunch again.

I made my skepticism into a profession. More than twenty years later, on an assignment as a journalist, I had a chance to live in a commune of ascetics in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. I spent two months investigating about the real age of the inmates of the commune as quite a few I was told were more than a century old while they looked much younger – something like in their 60s and 70s. I was told, and saw with my own eyes,l that they used to eat only once to twice a week. The younger ones were eating maximum thrice a week.

Without telling the commune inmates the purpose of my visit I watched their movements, day and night for a number of days. I made checks and cross checks with the villagers living around the commune. I concluded that they were really very small and infrequent eaters and were all in perfect health. They were used to starvation. All the commune inmates were yogi, the practitioner of yoga.

My third encounter with yoga happened when my own sister was struck with rheumatoid arthritis. I investigated the subject when all other treatments failed. Among many things I learnt how a yogi could awaken his higher mental faculties to win over hunger and desire, and could free himself to live healthier and longer.

Now all the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. That old man of my childhood and the inmates of the commune seemed to smile at me in their wisdom. And not with the contempt and skepticism I had previously had for them.

Entry Filed under: Yoga