JOIN USFitness as a concept is not just restricted to physical paradigms. A person, who is fit on the physical front, might feel enormous levels of mental disturbance and emotional stress. Where a rigid and exhausting exercise in the gym gives one the desired toned body, one’s mental fitness is invariably neglected.
However, Yoga is one discipline, which helps one in gaining spiritual wisdom along with physical and mental fitness.
Capturing some of the best Yoga asanas, photographer Benoy K Behl has curated an exhibition, ‘Yoga for All, Yoga for Health’, which opened on Tuesday at the World Health Organisation. A prolific lensman and documentary filmmaker, Behl whose travel bug has taken him to places across the seven seas, including Vietnam, Germany, Japan and the US, has displayed 39 photographs of Yogic asanas, wherein the importance of Yoga for one’s overall health and well being is conveyed to the world.
As a practice, Yoga has been adopted on a large scale by the people in the west. Though many people perceive the practice as a mere ‘physical exercise’, exhibitions such as these enable the people to understand and appreciate the deeper and more vital connotations behind Yoga.
“It is not just a physical practice; it’s a way of life. One adopts it as a lifestyle, a discipline which makes one indulge into the world of pure divinity and wisdom,” said Behl while explaining a few of the photographs.
The origins of the practice take us to 5,000 years ago, in the Indus Valley. Where the very concept of Yoga was put forward by the Upanishads. People eventually adopted it as a practice which answers their problems in the most healing and positive way, he says.
“In an age where considerable medical problems and psychological disorders are created by the pressures of the commercialised world, the only answer appears to be Yoga,” Behl tells Metrolife.
Speaking of his future prospects and his endeavour to make more and more people aware of the divinities of Yoga, he says, “I am now working on my second documentary on Yoga, for which I have travelled all across the globe. I have captured, and will always be capturing the photographs of some of the finest practitioners of Yoga in the world.”
The exhibition is on till May 30, at the World Health Organisation.