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Diwali For A Yoga Seeker
Diwali is known as the “festival of lights”. People light oil lamps and decorate their homes with strings of twinkling lights to symbolize the victory of light over darkness. With Glittering lanes and cleaned-up houses, India lights up all its shops and houses to welcome the most-awaited festival of the year, Diwali.
Ignite The Lamp of Knowledge
With excitement all around, with streets shimmering with lights and people wearing new clothes and smiles on their faces, they look forward to the grand celebrations on the occasion of five days of Diwali, an annual festival that brings families together. People exchange love, warmth, and joy on this auspicious festival. But this festival of lights should be celebrated not only to light up oil lamps or lights in the house but also to ignite the lamp of knowledge within to ward off the darkness of ignorance. And that is what Yoga is all about – to ignite or awaken the Akhand lamp of knowledge within us.
Two things that we can do on this occasion
We as yoga seekers can do two things to make this festival of light worthwhile for us –
Diwali For Cleaning
To start with, we can change our lifestyle slightly. As during Diwali, we clean up our houses, we can also make it a point to first keep our body clean with yoga techniques like Asana, Pranayama, and Shatkarma kriyas. Along with this, de-cluttering of the mind with breathing awareness and meditation will help clear negative thoughts and increase positive energy within. This simple procedure can be a great step to lead us to the path of going inwards. This is exactly what Diwali represents.
During Diwali, people clean every nook and corner of their house eliminating all the waste and dirt to invoke Goddess Laxmi. Similarly, we too should first learn to treat our body like a temple and keep it clean not just occasionally like on Diwali, but daily.
Develop Self Control
The second thing that we can do is to practice self-control or develop control over our senses. During Diwali, we are surrounded by a variety of sweets and snacks and it becomes difficult for us to control ourselves. We must practice austerity and learn to control in such circumstances. We should be aware that eating too much will only be an obstruction in the practice of yoga. Yoga teaches us to take control of our senses and be contented.
So this Diwali onwards, we should take the oath of cleaning ourselves physically and mentally and then develop control of our senses.
