Sadhguru, Isha Foundation
Many people are asking the question, ‘Where is the time for yoga in our hectic lives?’ You get up at six o’clock, go to the office, work, come back home, take care of the kids, eat and till whatever time you go to bed, you have a busy day. Where is the time for yoga? You have time to eat, to gossip, to work, you have the time to take care of everything but you have no time to take care of yourself?
This attitude comes about because you try to act like a martyr all the time. I have no time for myself. I am giving myself totally to everybody. What is it that you are giving? Your agitations, irritations, anxieties are being passed on to children. If you are truly concerned about your children, creating a joyful and loving atmosphere for their growth on a daily basis, moment to moment, is more important.
So what is your focus about life? If you are able to manage your work, your children and everything else, do it. If you are unable to, do what you can do. Everybody can only do that much. Each individual has to decide how much they can do. Somebody may be able to get up at six o’clock and do all these things joyfully; somebody else may not be able to. Accordingly they have to adjust their life.
The whole problem is people are trying to be like somebody else. You want to have what other people have. You do not know whether you really need it or not. With all this work, what you have earned, your children, your husband, your wife, or whatever, you are no longer enjoying it. Then why do you need all this?
You have created all these things because you thought this is the source of your joy. But right now, that has become the source of your anxiety and misery. Then shouldn’t you look at the fundamentals of your life once again? You got educated, you found a job, you married, you had children; you did all this, why? Because you thought this is going to be the source of your happiness and wellbeing, isn’t it? But now, that is taking your life. If it is so, you must look at it. One thing is, if you are incapable of handling it, maybe you have to scale it down or if you are capable of enhancing your capabilities, you must do that.
If you invest, let us say, even 30 minutes a day into yoga, you will enhance your capabilities and you will gain immensely, even in terms of time. The first thing that will happen is your sleep quota will come down. Right now if you are sleeping eight hours a day, that means you are just sleeping off one third of your life. If your body and your mind are more energised and active, your sleep quota will naturally come down. So if you gain three, four hours a day, just in terms of wakefulness, that is a huge benefit.
Apart from that, with a simple process of yoga, your body and mind get more organised. You would see that your level of performance becomes such that whatever you are doing in eight hours, you will very easily be able to do it in three to four hours. This is simply because, if you observe yourself through the day, suppose we take a video of your whole day without you being aware of it, you will notice how much unnecessary movement and unnecessary words and unnecessary activities are happening in your life.
If your mind becomes more organised, these unnecessary words and movements will disappear. Once they go away, you feel more energetic and will also have a lot of time. You have 24 hours to live. You don’t have to make this into 26 hours; 24 hours are enough. We can do a lot in 24 hours. If we are organised and focused human beings, we can do plenty in 24 hours’ time. If you are disorganised and unfocused, you think there is no time. Most people are not busy, they are just preoccupied. It is just too much preoccupation in the mind.
So if one makes time and brings yoga into their lives, suddenly the quality of their life will be very different.
(Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic,
visionary and bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma
Vibhushan in 2017 for exceptional and distinguished service)
