The first surprise is that Swami Jyotirmayananda is Dutch. I never discover the 41-year-old’s original name. She abandoned it when she ceased to be a social worker in the Netherlands and decided to devote her life to yoga. Now she is one of 30 or so swamis – she translates the word as monk – running a worldwide network of Sivananda Yoga Vedanta centres.
Jyotirmayananda and a teacher from Portugal who has adopted what he calls the spiritual name of Arjuna are instructing me in the form of hatha yoga practised at the centres. Far removed from the hot yoga and yoga-cise beloved of Hollywood celebs, it draws on 5,000 years of Indian traditions and emphasises stillness, silence and meditation.
We are meeting at the organisation’s UK headquarters in a quiet, residential street in Putney, south-west London. The swami and two other staff live in; 40 yoga teachers give classes here; volunteers come in to cook and help out. “We are a family,” says the swami with a serenity that never wavers during our three hours together.
I am being inducted into this ancient art/science/religion/doctrine/model-for-living (it aspires to be all these things) before International Yoga Day on Sunday, an initiative launched at the United Nations last year by India’s yoga-loving prime minister, Narendra Modi, who is keen to reclaim one of India’s best-known cultural exports.
International Yoga Day will see an attempt to break the world record for the largest ever yoga class when 35,000 enthusiasts gather in New Delhi, as well as numerous other events around the world. The London Sivananda centre’s contribution is a boat trip from Putney to Westminster for 300 acolytes and a mass yoga class on the South Bank.
I suggest to the swami that her form of yoga is a religion, but she rejects the term. “Yoga is not a religion,” she says. “This has to be underlined. It is a way of living life healthily, of living a balanced life in which all the aspects of one’s being are integrated.”
The centre’s approach is based on the teachings of Hindu guru Sivananda Saraswati, who died in 1963, and is summed up in six words: serve, love, give, purify, meditate, realise. These are translated into a plan based on exercise, breathing, relaxation, diet, positive thinking and meditation. The more committed followers renounce tea, coffee, alcohol, meat, even onions and garlic, which are thought too stimulating. The swami herself has renounced marriage. This is a tough calling, though after my yoga session they give me a stimulant-free vegetarian lunch, and it’s delicious.
Yoga has boomed in the west in the past couple of decades, and many of the variants that have developed have moved away from its meditative origins. The swami is surprisingly sympathetic to this explosion of westernised forms. “The beauty of there being so many offshoots and more modern versions is that people of all temperaments can find a system that suits them.” She does, though, draw the line at doga – yoga for dogs, derived, of course, from the US.
I had assumed there would be a turf war between hatha, bikram, iyengar, kundalini, ashtanga and even newer forms of yoga that are closer to martial arts, but she insists this is not the case. “Everyone should be able to connect to what is right for them, and we respect the different traditions.” It would be unseemly for the different yoga bodies to obsess about market share. Better to see the whole tree rather than the divergent branches.
The prescribed postures (known as asanas) are at the core of hatha yoga. Thousands of these have accumulated during the 5,000 years in which yoga has been practised, but Sivananda teachers – of whom there are 36,000 around the world – concentrate on just 12. I try the shoulderstand, fish and half spinal twist. Happily I am spared the rest, which include the headstand, scorpion, locust, cobra, crow and peacock.
Even with Arjuna holding my legs steady, the shoulderstand – in which you lie down, rest your shoulders on the ground, raise the rest of your body and try to keep it upright – proves testing. Some of the positions in the home practice handbook they give me look frankly impossible. Do not attempt the feet-to-head scorpion without an ambulance present.
The king cobra knee hold is also challenging, yet experts will hold these asanas for seven or eight minutes. I manage about 30 seconds of the three I try before reverting to the “corpse” position, in which you lie with your legs and arms outstretched and meditate. Had I tried all the asanas, the corpse position might have taken on a grisly literalness.
The swami tells me the postures are the key because they provide the route to mind control. Arjuna shows me how to breathe from the diaphragm then we chant together – three lots of extended “oms” every so often – and he recites a few beautifully modulated mantras.
It is very restful; I start to feel light-headed – the deep breathing means you take in more oxygen – and by the end, when he covers me with a blanket, I am more or less comatose. He tells me to empty my mind of all thoughts, but this is easier said than done, and I start pondering the impossibility of thoughtlessness. They had also told me earlier I would be getting lunch, and because it’s past 2pm and I’m hungry I can’t stop thinking about that either.
There are four Hindu gods – Krishna, Ganesha, Saraswati and Lakshmi – in a shrine in the studio, but the swami says these are there to provide positive energy rather than for acts of devotion. There is also a clock, which surprises me as I’d assumed the aim would be to escape the tyranny of time. But she explains that parking in Putney is a nightmare, and you have to watch your meter like a hawk ... or a peacock. The world’s intrusions are not easily evaded.
“People are searching for a way to find health and wellbeing, and to relax their mind and body,” she says, reflecting on how stress-related issues have driven the growth of yoga in the west. As I sit in the sun in the little peace garden finally eating my lentil dhal and nursing what is no more than a twinge in the small of the back, I can see what she means.
I eat this late lunch rapidly and, when the cook offers me more, manage to resist. Serve, love, give, purify, meditate, realise. I am learning the art of renunciation. Unfortunately, when I get home I immediately have a mug of tea and four digestive biscuits. This is going to be a long haul.
