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Be considerate to your body. Look after your hands, shoulders, legs, neck, stomach, hips, thighs and knees. All these have to be targeted with exercises.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

Our śāstras say that in this world, the fundamental cause of our birth, rebirths, and the series of births and deaths is ignorance, ajñāna or delusion, vyāmoha. It is true also. We have got the great sankalpa, “Anādi avidyā vāsanayā pravṛttamānasya asmin mahati saṃsāra cakre… – in this huge wheel of the worldly life, propelled by ignorance and desire, which are beginningless …” We say here that the worldly life is revolving (saṃsāra-cakra) because of the beginningless ignorance and delusion that cause various desires. These desires are active and vibrant everywhere. It is a fact.

Dear children, understand that in all fields of activity, every human is chased by ignorance and delusion. The result is that people in general are not given to thinking about what life is, how it has to be led, what is to be achieved and what destination one should aim at is. What is meant by fulfillment of life? Such questions never occur to them. Even when people get married, they do not necessarily think as to what marriage is for, or about its higher goals. Similarly, when they study, they don’t think about the purpose of education. When they earn money, they don’t know the objective of earning money, and the manner in which it has to be rightfully spent. Everywhere it is lack of knowledge, and the cause is the indomitable influence of ignorance and delusion.

Why am I saying this? There is ignorance even regarding the upkeep of the body. For a good and healthy body, you should have nourishment on the one hand – which comes through food – and regular exercises on the other.

Many people erroneously think that they are given to some activity or the other, that these activities involve exertion, and hence these are sufficient for their bodily upkeep. It is never so. A housewife, working many hours in the kitchen, or in and around the house, sometimes wrongly claims that because she is up on her heels right from early morning till she goes to bed, she need not take any special exercise. That is another form of delusion.

Running around doing chores in the house is not sufficient. It is not the type of exercise that the body needs in order to preserve its health. The housewife still has to do something else – like going to the park or any other public place and walk briskly for at least half an hour, if not more. When this point is mentioned to the housewives, they never listen to it. They do not understand it.

The same applies to all the people here in the Ashram, and many others who come to hear me in satsangs. All of you should understand that you have got a body which is fed all right, but it is not exercised properly. Due to lack of exercises, many of you are suffering from ill health.

Generally, spiritual practice is coupled with some yogāsanās. Understand that even for a spiritual seeker, the body has to be kept healthy. Health of the body depends upon applying ‘targeted exercises’. I think all of you should start treating your body just like any other object dear to you. So, I always say: “Love your body.”

Be considerate to your body. Look after your hands, shoulders, legs, neck, stomach, hips, thighs and knees. All these have to be targeted with exercises.

I would like you to think about it and discuss the subject with me, so that every one of you will spend some time – at least thirty to forty minutes – on exercise. Now, do not tell me that you have no time for exercises. Are you not taking food? Are you not sleeping? In the same manner you must find sometime. You will not be able to continue to do the work, which you are now doing, unless you put the body to physical exercises.

Whenever people come to know that you are taking exercise at such and such a time, they will freely and lovingly cooperate to facilitate it. Everyone should take up the cause of another to see that together everyone is taking regular exercise. Let A encourage B and facilitate B for doing exercises, and B encourage A. Similarly, every other person should take up the cause of another.

I would like this to be implemented from today. The twenty-four hours are not going to increase. And routines and work are also not going to abate; they will not become lesser. Our Ashram is going to have more and more activities. Let this exercise be taken in such a way that it becomes part of your life – like eating – and you will start missing it, if you are unable to make it one day.

I think I have started missing my exercises and I also feel happy in saying that I am taking ‘targeted exercises’ meant for the different parts of the body. I brisk-walk regularly and I don’t want my pace to come down. I would like to maintain the same swiftness. I must have agility. I have added one or two items to my exercises – to be done while taking bath – for my hips as well as the knees. They have not yet become very regular with me, because I forget. I think in the course of another fifteen days or at most a month, they will also become a part of me.

Like that, why don’t you also start? You can talk to me about it. I will also show you how to take exercises because these are things, which I have studied and assimilated after decades of experience with yogāsanās and other forms of exercise including physiotherapy.

One day I went to an orthopaedic surgeon in Thrissur, and said: “I have not come here with any particular disease or disorder; but I would like to ensure that I remain free of them. So, will you tell me what am I to do? I generally skip nearly a hundred times; but recently the doctors have told me that I should not skip at my age. Apparently, it is not good for my spinal cord. In that case, what else can I do?”

He took a picture of my spine, and after that he took me to the department of physiotherapy and told the Head: “Please teach Swamiji some exercises so that he will be healthy.” I have clubbed whatever I have learnt into my daily routine. Today, my exercises are a combination of yogāsanās, physiotherapeutic exercises and some more based on my own intuition and understanding. And I would like to be healthy and flexible for as long as the body lives.

This is something that every one of you should do. Remember this, and after sometime, if you say: “I was busy, Swamiji. I could not take exercises,” I will not have sympathy for you at all. My sympathy is there for you now. Listen to what I say, and do it well.

Harih Om Tat Sat. Jai Guru.

From Vicharasethu Mar 2008