Achieving a balance in muscles and mind

OVER a huge floor, 20 women move as one through strange and varied postures. Ambient music mingles with rhythmic breathing, a solitary figure orchestrates the collective ritual. This is no New Age pow-wow but a long established yoga class in the less-than-exotic setting of Rutherglen Burgh Halls.

With a 5000-year-old pedigree codified in classical texts and honoured by the ascetic lifestyle of its Indian practitioners, this philosophy/physical culture has taken root in the church halls, sports centres and health groups of Scotland, and is flourishing in Glasgow.

Yoga builds stamina, soothes nerves, strengthens health. Converts laud its benefits, and a dedicated teacher network has transformed the popular perception of yoga from comical masochism to a holistic method of health promotion and stress management.

I discovered this pithy truth when reporting on a Scottish health spa. Here, it was not the welter of hedonistic treatments which most successfully melted away soaring stress levels, but an hour of basic yoga.

Hatha yoga (Ha/sun, thal moon) has an innate decorum belied by its sometimes curious postures, the asanas. These are yoga's foundation and exert a profound impact on muscles, tendons, skeleton, even vital organs. Crocodile, Warrior, Bow, Fish, Plough, Moon: Asana names are graphic with the body mimicking the linear qualities of each in unchanging sequences. Respecting one's natural limit within a stretch is crucial.

Add to the Asanas the potent art of correct breating - Pranayama - and the plot thickens. Harmonious breathing, usually the first casualty of stress and anxiety, orchestrates the in and outbreaths to coincide with each stage of an asana. Pranayama awakens a balance between muscle and mind.

These joys remain pipe dreams if one perceives the slightest threat in surroundings. Enter the trustworthy teacher. DIY yoga manuals do warn against bad practice but a sensitive teacher will pace the individual, indispensibly drawing the line between stretching and straining, breathing and hyperventilating.

Ellen Foley, a hospital laboratory assistant, has practised yoga for 18 years and gives a general level class at Woodside Sports Centre to an impressively mixed group of all ages.

On sports mats, we are gently taken through basic relaxation before the asanas. Foley asking us to focus on those parts of our bodies loosened through slow, controlled stretches by ``breathing into'' them. The breath, she explains, is a grounding mechanism for the chattering mind. ``To be within the quiet of yourself you have to use it. Every time concentration wanders, you follow your breath and that's you back to the rhythm. Then you stop watching, and just are.''

On thus painlessly-toned physiques, the closing relaxation with guided imagery has stronger impact. ``Trust yourself, surrender to yourself, stay with this picture that you are soft - and strong,'' she reassures as we direct a ``stress releasing warmth'' through each part of the body as she names it. Even the follicles in my scalp release their tension.

Devotees of Iyengar, who pioneered his own increasingly popular form of yoga 40 years ago are often known as ``the marines of yoga''. While rush-hour traffic rumbles through Sauchiehall Street, Iyengar is taught amid the shrines and incense plumes of Glasgow's Buddhist Centre.

Ratnadeva, a German-born Buddhist of textbook physique puts us through initial stretches, and the more demanding postures of this challenging discipline. The angles of stretch are stringent.

``We need to pay attention to body feedback rather than imposing our will on it. But if you're too comfortable, you don't challenge yourself and I find some people are not tough enough for Iyengar,'' she comments. Most of her pupils have some yoga experience, but my rusty frame succumbs to cramp and spasm.

Back in Rutherglen Burgh Halls, Margaret Sutherland has taught a gentler Iyengar for 15 years, and understands the sometimes vulnerable state yoga can evoke. Like all instruments for change, it should be approached with caution and respect.

Margaret became blind four years ago. She identifies many of her students from the sound of their footsteps as they enter the hall: ``It's an inward journey - I have developed quite strongly in my yoga since my blindness which is why I don't want to give it up.'' Although she performs each movement of an asana, her voice, an Irish brogue, is her working tool.

Slow, lateral stretches flow to the Cat with its sensuous, sharp outbreath from the bottom of the lungs. Then outwards through Swan, Dog, Trichonasna, Utanasna, Pose of a Child, Head of a Cow and Thunderbolt. ``Open your chest,'' she urges. ``An open chest is an open heart, and an open heart is an open mind.''

The secure space established by this teacher, the comfortable humour from friendly students all rapidly yield results: physical boundaries dissolve at one point, my fingertips seeming to stretch to the very walls.

Many of Margaret's students have stayed with her: some, in their 50s and 60s have enviable muscle tone and litheness. One such woman recalls the caveat uttered by a hospital sister years ago. ``Yoga. That's the road to . . .'' - its dark destination left unspoken.

Yet today at the Royal Infirmary, physiotherapist Mary Flood gives an Iyengar class to staff in a gym used for cardiac and osteoporosis rehabilitation.

Former biochemist Dr Robin Monro suffered long from severe asthma. His need of steroid inhalers seemed imminent but he chose instead remedial yoga therapy recommended by an Indian doctor. From his first yoga day Monro found medication unnecessary although it took between three and five years of two daily hours of yoga to yield a recession of symptoms.

Today, Dr Monro is Director of the Yoga Biomedical Trust exploring yoga's healing application to chronic and stress induced illness. ``If people do 40 minutes of yoga a day, it will have an effect, and it's the way it feels from the inside that matters,'' he insists.

The trust conducts controlled clinical trials assessing yoga's impact on asthma and diabetes. Significant blood glucose reduction showed in the group practising yoga.

Stress reduction and increased stamina are keys to improved health detailed in Yoga for Common Ailments. This intelligent manual, co-written by Dr Monro, prescribes relevant yoga for back pain, rheumatism hernia, insomnia, hypertension, heart disease, MS, epilepsy and addiction.

A feeling of tranquil inner space can develop quite spectacularly via yoga, and the Pheonix Trust's aims to establish a yoga class in every Scottish prison. Twelve years ago, Kay Blackstock gave her first class to a drug rehabilitation group in Barlinnie. ``People didn't understand it and were scared of it,'' she recalls. Her opening words: ``Shoes off, and lie on the floor,'' perplexed the prisoners, but she persisted, gaining impressive results over the years.

``The longer men were in a class, the readier they were to help each other. Controlled breathing is very steadying. Heart and pulse rates go down, so do adrenalin and aggression levels. If you're in control of your body, you're in control of your emotions.''

Aerobic ``burn'' may still be the ne plus ultra for many seeking escape in exercise, but endorphins aside, yoga can enrich the lives of those serious in its practise.

Witness the verdicts of the Friday Barlinnie class now taught by Katy MacFarlane, ex-Secretary of the Scottish Yoga Teachers' Association. ``You get a relaxed feeling but without using malt whisky . . . you're less aggressive, your mind feels calm . . . your body feels supple rather than over-exercised . . . and you leave without the white knuckles you come in with.''

A Sun Salutation, after all, is not a bad way of starting each new day.

LOTUS ELAN

n For further information on yoga, contact:

n Ellen Foley at North Woodside Leisure Centre, Braid Square, Glasgow; tel. 0141-332 8102.

n Ratnadeva at Glasgow Buddhist Centre, 329 Sauchiehall Street; 0141-333 0524.

n Margaret Sutherland at Rutherglen Burgh Halls; 0141-634 8770.

n Scottish Yoga Teachers' Association; 0141-332 8507.