Niraj Naik, a doctor, learned yoga by asking why each technique works instead of accepting it on faith. He details nasal breathing patterns and shanka prakshalana, an intestinal cleanse, while criticizing both doctors who dismiss yoga as unscientific and yogis who can't explain their own practices.
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But then what happened? You know, when I started learning yoga, I could not put aside my medical knowledge. And so whatever technique Swamiji was teaching, I was interpreting in terms of the medical physiology to look at the yogic techniques. My point of view always remained that of a medical person, not of a lay person. What happens is whenever a lay person learns yoga, he takes the knowledge with great faith because of the devotion to the guru, devotion to the Swamiji. He takes every information, every knowledge that is given, he takes in with great faith. What a scientist has to do is a scientist has to do the inquisitiveness.
One has to take things only if they are logical. You cannot just take things on the basis of faith because the Guru is saying so, it must be so. So what was happening was when he used to teach, breathe, closing your right nostril, then close the left nostril, then exhale through the right nostril. Immediately a medical person thinks, what difference is it going to make if I breathe through the right nostril or the left nostril? Because anatomically both the nostrils connect in the nasopharynx. Inside they are one only, outside they are two. But you know, if you give it a deeper thought, you know that even your right hand and your left hand, they are not the same. The things that you can do. If you are a right handed one, you will brush your teeth with your right hand, you cannot brush with the left one.
So exactly.
Similarly, what difference exists between your right hand and left hand? Differences also exist in your right eye and the left eye, the right nostril and the left nostril. Same way, right foot and the left foot. If you want a greater detail, you can refer to medical literature and male Robin has excellently summarized about the right handedness and the left handedness. You may please go through that.
Melrobin.
Melrobin.
Then what happened was.
When we attended that yoga camp, we also learnt the internal cleansing procedures. You will find their mentioned in my book.
Washing the intestines with water. That is known as shanka prakshalana.
It is a very marvelous process.
You need to drink a lot of water with added pinch of salt to it, warm water, and then you move the abdomen in a certain way, do some physical exercises of five types. You will find there mentioned in my book. The whole technique is known as shanka prachalanam. And very soon bowel evacuation starts. At first one passes some semi solid stools, then liquid stools, then colorless liquid. And I was very fascinated with that technique because in medical knowledge we are never exposed to such techniques that one can induce loose motions, like watery loose motions, and one can literally wash the intestines with lukewarm salted water. That was the first time that I learned. That was during the year 1986 that I had first attended this yoga shivir, when I was about 30. 30 years of age. 30 or 31.
So that's interesting. So this is how you got into yoga and you started to. Did you start incorporating yoga then into your medical work?
When I refer to the medical literature, I noticed that actually.
Doctors commonly don't go to learn yoga because of their background. Most of us have learned medicine in the modern medical colleges.
Most of the medical research has been done in the Europe and the America.
And there is a common, I mean, way of looking at the ancient Indian practices.
As quackeries. I mean, even Ayurveda, yoga, all these ancient traditional wisdoms, the doctors tend to look upon them as something quackery, unscientific thing. Rather than trying to understand the science behind it, they simply reject them as worthless. Yes. At the same time, the yogis who are teaching these techniques to common people, they do not understand the underlying mechanisms and therefore they cannot give the correct interpretation in scientific terms. For example, when a yogi teaches you pranayama, yogi will tell you that pranayama provides you some extra oxygen about which the doctors don't feel convinced because it is not the extra oxygen which can cure illnesses. Had it been so, we do have oxygen cylinders in our clinics, so we could provide oxygen in any amount, maybe 100% oxygen. Pranayama does not provide 100% oxygen, but the doctors could provide. But sadly, 100% oxygen does not cure any illness. 100% oxygen does not prolong your life. Moreover, it may even be harmful under certain circumstances because you tend to have oxidative damage.
So yogis were not providing the correct scientific background, the correct scientific reason behind the yogic techniques providing you some beneficial effects. And that is the reason why doctors were not convinced. It is only the way how you think about it that makes all the difference.
