Shiva – Origin of Yoga – {Ep.215} – Stories From India – Podcast

A story set in Mount Kailash about the Origin of Yoga. We’ll see what Shiva, Parvati and the stars in the Big Dipper or Saptarishi had to do with its origin and spread!

Welcome to “Stories From India”. This is a podcast that will take you on a journey through the rich mythology, folklore and history of the Indian subcontinent. I am Narada Muni, the celestial storyteller and the original “time lord”. With my ability to travel through space and time, I can bring you fascinating stories from the past, the present, and the future. From the epic tales of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the folktales of the Panchatantra to stories of Akbar-Birbal and Tenali Raman, I have a story for every occasion.

The purpose of the stories is neither to pass judgment nor to indoctrinate. My goal is only to share these stories with people who may not have heard them before and to make them more entertaining for those who have.

Today’s Story

Some of you asked for a Shiva story, and others wanted to talk about the origin of Yoga. So here we are.

Before we begin the story, let me give you a little bit of context, in case you don’t know who Shiva is. Shiva is part of the Holy trinity in Indian Mythology. Shiva plays the role of Destroyer of the Universe. While Brahma is the Creator. Vishnu is the Preserver and acts as a kind of a balance between Brahma’s creations and Shiva’s annihilation.

Not to toot my own horn too much. But, Brahma is my dad. And I’m Vishnu’s number one fan. And I’m friends with Shiva and his family. That last meant that I’d often visit Shiva’s home on Mount Kailash in the Trans himalayan Kailash range.

And that’s exactly what I was doing on the day that this story begins. I was chatting with Shiva and his wife Parvati in their home. Which was on incredibly frigid Mount Kailash in the winter.

“You’re right Narada. It is incredibly frigid here on Mount Kailash, especially in the winter” Parvati said.

I ought to be surprised when Parvati reads my thoughts with such ease, but honestly I was not. She’s an all powerful Goddess, and that means she knows everything. Especially how her visitors are feeling.

“Well, have you considered turning up the heat?” I asked. My teeth were practically chattering from the cold. And I thought if I didn’t pour a cup of steaming hot tea down my throat quickly, my insides might freeze.

Shiva was the one who replied “Well you know how it is. I could do the Tandava. It’ll bring down lava rain and that should make it warmer here. But the catch is that the Universe might get wiped out. And it’s a little bit ahead of schedule. The next apocalypse isn’t due for a few years now”

“Best not,” I said hurriedly. “Then my dad will have to create the Universe all over again. And he rather likes this one. He was telling me, he’s especially proud of his own work in crafting the rings of the planet Saturn. Be a shame if he had to start all over again.”

“But tell me, how does it work for a God and Goddess like you? What makes you immune to the cold? What’s your secret?”

“I’ll tell you what’s their secret,” Nandi said. “It’s prayer” he said and laughed out loud at his own remark.

Parvati turned serious. “You know Narada. Funnily enough I asked the same question once, and Shiva taught me the answer. Simply put, it’s Yog”

“Don’t you mean Yoga?” I asked curiously

“Nah, that’s 21st century pronunciation. With us, who originated it – it’s meant to be pronounced Yog.”

Of course she was right. One of the side effects of being a time traveler is that you sometimes get your centuries mixed up and end up pronouncing things incorrectly sometimes. You might have noticed that at some point on this show.

Parvati went on to explain that Shiva had taught her 84 asanas or poses in Yoga. In doing so, he had also become the Universe’s first Yog teacher, or the Adi Guru. 

I told Shiva and Parvati that it made sense. I knew all about Yog of course, just I like I knew about everything else, with my unbounded universal knowledge. I had actually been a skeptic in the beginning. You see I had a bit of a posture problem – probably from all the time and space traveling. I hadn’t believed that Yog could fix my posture problem, but I stand corrected, I said.

Anyway, what I was interested in knowing from Shiva and Parvati was how exactly their secret had spread to humans? I mean check out planet Earth in the 21st century, everyone seems to be doing Yoga. There is an international day of Yoga, YouTube is peppered with Yoga instruction videos, there are many Yoga studios in every major city. There are Yoga themed clothes, there are Yoga themed events. How did we go from Shiva and Parvati’s private secret to all this?

Parvati explained that things were going well after Shiva taught her the 84 poses, and the two of them regularly practiced Yog for decades – you could say it was a long stretch. There came a point when Mount Kailash did not seem incredibly frigid after all, even in winters.

Yog would have stayed a secret except that’s when the Saptarishis visited.

A quick sidebar here in case you haven’t heard of the term Saptarishi before. They are seven great Rishis, or wise men. They have featured individually and collectively in many other stories, some of which we have covered before on this show. I’ve often called them the Hall of Fame rishis. But one important fact – Saptarishi membership is not fixed. Yes, there are always only seven of them, but who those seven rishis are varies over time and age. In the current era they are Vashishta, Kashyap, Atri, Jamadagni, Gautam, Vishwamitra, and Bharadvaja.

These Saptarishi were wandering the mountains, looking for a place to meditate. Why the mountains, you ask? You could pray from anywhere – your local temple, your home. But there was a belief that you had to be literally somewhere up high in order to communicate with the Gods and Goddesses. And that belief was encouraged by the members of the Ancient India Himalayan Tourism board. They took out some pull page ads in ancient Indian newspapers – maybe you saw them? The tag line was “Himalayas: the “peak” destination for your Meditation Zenith”

Anyway, thats what made mountains a popular destination. And that meant the Himalayas were getting rather crowded with people praying for immortality, or some superpower, or just inner peace. 

The Saptarishis transcended the crowded Himalayas and reached the Kailas range in search of a place to meditate. Naturally they chose the most impressive mountain they saw – Mount Kailash. They decided to scale it and meditate there for a few years, obviously not knowing yet that the mountaintop was already occupied.

Shiva was there, doing his Yoga. When you’re constantly planning new and innovative ways of destroying the Universe, Yoga has a relaxing effect and it calms the mind.

It was at this point that the Saptarishi wandered in. It wasn’t rude of them to just wander into Shiva and Parvati’s living room. Seeing as said living room is on top of a mountain, and lacks doors, walls, doorbells, who’s to say where the publicly accessible mountaintop ends, and where the private living space begins?

“Oh we’re sorry, we didn’t know this mountaintop was taken,” Gautum said.

But Vishwamitra was getting a little angry. “It’s the same thing again and again! Just like the Himalayas. This is the fourth peak we’ve climbed only to find that it’s occupied. Now we have to go down the mountain for weeks, and climb up another mountain and that’ll take a few more weeks. Why can’t we just have a reservation system to deal with this? Or those little “occupied” signs in Airplanes, only we’d have them setup at the base of the mountain”

It was not a bad idea. But the other 6 rishis weren’t thinking about that. They were thinking that it’s best not to let Vishwamitra get angry. For reasons we’ve seen before in Episode 15. Some of the Saptarishis turned to look at Vashishta. If anyone could calm Vishwamitra down, it was Vashista. Just as he had done in Episode 15.

But this time Vishwamitra calmed down before Vashista even said anything. Because that was the time Bharadvaja made an observation. That this person meditating and doing some intriguing poses looked like Shiva. They all realized Bharadvaja was right. They stood there, observing Shiva go through his Yog routine. And at the conclusion of it, Shiva opened his eyes. Only two of them, thankfully. “Well gentlemen, you’ve been observing my Yog routine, what did you think?”

They all loved it! And were intrigued by it, and they wanted to learn it! Could Shiva please teach them?

But Shiva was reluctant. This knowledge was meant to be used well – for people to live well, to experience good health and so on. Not to make someone a youtube celebrity earning a few paise every time someone watched their video.

The Saptarishi were on the whole good men, Shiva added. And they were doing good deeds all over the planet. Even if some of them were too quick to curse people, and had caused lots of destruction of life and property. Vishwamitra shuffled his feet nervously.

Vashishta replied that that was all in the past, the point is that they were getting better now. There has been change and it has come from within.

The Saptarishi continued to plead until finally Shiva agreed. If you’re in the mood for low quality puns, you could say he stretched a point, or bent over backwards.

It took a while to teach all seven rishis all 84 poses. None of the Saptarishis said so, but you could see some of them wince when Shiva explained the Durvasa Asana. It must have hurt that the Rishi Durvasa had an Asana, or a pose named after him. Durvasa wasn’t a saptarishi. His membership had been denied multiple times, owing to his anger management problems. And before you point out that Vishwamitra had some anger issues too, I’ll just say that Durvasa was in a different league altogether, because he was petty as well.

Shiva seemed to sense that. “If it makes you feel better, there are a couple of Asana names that are up for grabs”

The two hands shot up first were those of Vashishta and Bharadvaja. And that’s why those two have an Asana named after them. But as Shiva assured the rest, they could always create their  own Asanas and call them whatever they want. They just needed to file a patent for it. It seemed from their faces they were going to do it too. And they did, but to you listeners in 2023, you may not be aware of those other poses yet. They’ll pop up at some point in your future.

After that, of course it was easy to see how Yog spread on Earth. Each Saptarishi did all of the standard things you might expect of eminent scholars. They attended conferences, participated in panel discussions with other Rishis, Kings, common people, they taught guest lectures at Universities they visited. They provided private tutoring to future Kings and Queens.

And through all this, they spread the word. The word was Yog, but I guess in spreading it became Yoga as most people call it today. People bought into the promise that it might change their lives, even if that promise seemed like a stretch.

That’s how Yoga got to where it is today.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

In the next episode, we’ll do a story about the Goddess of Wealth – Lakshmi. We’ll see what happens when a Goddess gives in to temptation and plucks a flower that doesn’t belong to her. Spoiler alert, she becomes human for a while!

Feedback

Thank you all for the comments on Social Media and on Spotify’s Q&A! I can’t directly reply to the questions there, but I’ll address them here on this show.

First of all, let me say how touched I was to read all your messages of concern. Thank you Vamsi, Rez, Rajul, Tanvii and Vaishnavi. 

Yes, I did have a bit of a sore throat last week. But it feels a lot better now.

I guess it goes to show that despite all my super-powers and universal knowledge, I’m unfortunately not immune to some less exciting things like a common cold.

If you have any other comments or suggestions or if there are particular stories you’d like to hear, please do let me know by leaving a comment or a review on the site sfipodcast.com, or tweet @sfipodcast, or reply to the questions on Spotify Q&A. You can also find me on Instagram and Facebook.

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A big thank you to each of you for your continued support and your feedback.

The music is from Purple Planet.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time!