We live in an urban jungle. The other day we were at lunch and the topic of discussion moved to stress busters. How do we really relieve ourselves from the stress that eats into us, produced by a society like Mumbai? My friend from Hyderabad remarked that we were making a mountain of a molehill by talking about this, and unanimously, the five of us answered back almost in unison, “We live in Mumbai!”

“Even though people are looking to de-stress, they don’t really do so,” said Samanta, my yoga teacher. “Yoga is about a balanced approach to practice, of both Yin (passive) and Yang (active) energy. However, most people are looking to lose weight, and that becomes their stress!” A one-time student of Shiamak Davar, Samanta started teaching with dance. However, she felt she needed to evolve further, making a decision then to teach yoga. “Yoga is a form of physical art. I needed to take teaching to a deeper level. Both dance and yoga are interlinked and an intrinsic expression of one’s being,” explained Samanta.
Samanta would tell me how difficult it was to teach in a city like Mumbai. “Sometimes I feel like running away,” she shrugged. “People don’t have the time or space in their minds to do yoga the way it’s meant to be done. Phones are ringing and they are constantly distracted. There is no immersion,” she continued. “And then there is the ridiculous expectation from a teacher to enable them to produce immediate results at losing weight. How about emptying the mind first and really trying to relax into the practice?”
“Yoga has physiological and psychological benefits. And for me to leave a class without achieving the exactness of teaching is dissatisfying. Teaching for me is a meditation itself,” she said.
“Changes in this form of practice are always from the outer trickling into the inner. It’s much more than just doing a ‘downward facing dog’. How much you want to achieve depends on how much you yourself are willing to transform, without needing simulations,” she said.
We talked more about a subject of using outside means to achieve a state of calm. Deepak Chopra has apparently invented a game that once you start playing gets you into a meditative mood. Who is to say if that is right or wrong? Sometimes, living in a city demands simulations, otherwise it is almost impossible to get away from the madness and allow the mind to be quiet. But Samanta did not agree with this. “You win half the battle if you are willing to put yourself in that space from within without outside help,” she said, shaking her head. “Drugs are a simulator that make you imagine that you have achieved nirvana, which is ridiculous,” she said.
For the last five years, Samanta has been teaching me an integrated approach to yoga, a mix of classical and dynamic. “I don’t know what the term ‘power yoga’ is,” she confessed. “It’s a misnomer popularised in the US. Ashthanga Vinyasa went to America and got repackaged as ‘power yoga’. Sometimes, it is just a cardio vascular package with jumps and even jogging weights.”
Samanta is an excellent teacher who works with a flow in her teaching. I often joke with her about starting a cult like some have and making thousands of crores of rupees. “They all start off with a good intention and somehow become too ambitious when their own desire sets in. Moreover, yoga combined with politics is a no-no. The actual practice as well as the reason for teaching is compromised,” she said.
Samanta is considering taking a sabbatical from Mumbai and going to teach in a resort three hours away from Goa called SwaSwara. “I don’t feel that I am satisfied running this rat race here in Mumbai. It is almost like hitting a superficial note in people. I feel sometimes it is essential to go away and then bring back with you the experience that you accomplish and achieve,” she said.