Letter from Leadership

Letter from the Leadership– August 2024

August 15, 2024: Kaivalya

Today is India’s Independence day– a day when the country gained freedom from colonial rule. This is a reminder that we must continue to be free from external powers, including in the field of yoga. India must be strong, resolute, and consistent in its endeavors to retain nation’s integrity when it comes to defining yoga. India should not be under the thrall and influence of a yoga that goes out, repackages itself, and comes back to India with outside influences. 

Yoga is all-encompassing and completely expansive. While each individual and community around the world should be free to create their own versions of yoga to serve their needs, India must independently decide for herself what yoga means to her: a way of life that can result in the ultimate freedom of kaivalya. 

Of course we can, and, must learn from the world, recognizing the wisdom in awareness at a global level. We must observe and reflect upon what is happening around the world in the field of yoga, how others are utilizing this great science and spirituality to address their own gaps. We should know what the current needs are, and know how to adapt yoga to meet those needs. We must recognize the good in the creativity of others, to engage with yoga on levels that make sense to them. We should analyze the multiple methodologies of yoga used by people from around the world. 

We must take the lessons from our experiences, reclaim our yoga, and ensure that India portrays to the world the purity of Yoga, a unique spiritual path, that always maintains sight of the end goal of kaivalya. 

What might that look like for India? 

Indian Yoga is the one that is integrated with our diverse cultures, lifestyles, and traditions. Such an idea of yoga situates itself in every context independently, evolving the people and places it serves on its own. Each region, state, and community needs its yoga to cater to its unique locality: the topography, the culture, the past, and the present. The yoga of a region is about the adaptation of yogic principles to the needs of the current scenario, customized to meet political upheavals, weather and climate changes, and religious choices. 

India must become a leader in the field through imbibing the spectrum of philosophies of yoga, recognizing the multiple modalities in which yoga has been developed and passed down to us through the ages. However, we can no longer ride on the coattails of our glorious past presented in the spectrum of Indic Knowledge Systems (IKS). We must bring yoga to the present day realities by conducting our own research, utilizing IKS methodologies, to understand how yoga impacts the communities in our country, and serves their needs. We have to utilize our skills and capacities to serve all those in need–from political asylum seekers and refugees to corporate leaders and employees, militaries. 

We must understand how yoga can act as a diplomatic peace builder to give us our independence, our freedom, our kaivalya. 

Now is the time for India to become a leader in Yoga, just as our Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi ji has incredible foresight and encourages India to be. All Indians should strive to make India a beacon of knowledge and development in the field that lights the path for others to follow, like a Guru. While it should draw from the traditions and lineages, it should also develop those principles that meet the current needs of our country. 

Karnataka Yoga Council strives to highlight on the ground activities in yoga through our leaders in the field. Through our endeavors, we encourage women who are using technology to promote yoga, writers to contribute their thoughts, leaders to discuss their ideas, and research scholars to introduce their discoveries. We invite women to join our council and receive support through sangha and networking that inspires them to develop the yoga field in India through unique methodologies that reach out to the population, creating a yoga that embodies its multiple philosophies of the past and present.

Love and light,

Sowmya Ayyar

President of WICCI