The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Propagating the art of yoga with missionary zeal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 03, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Propagating the art of yoga with missionary zeal

"Asanas and Pranayama provide enough energy to carry through the day"

At 80 years, he leads as active a life as someone half his age. He is the vice-president of the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy of the Department of AYUSH, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Asana Andiappan talks to Swahilya on yoga, which he propogates with missionary zeal.

For someone whose schedule is hectic, Asana Andiappan's diet is most spartan. The octogenarian's schedule includes taking yoga classes, editing two monthly journals, `Yogakalai' and `Asana', and constantly adding to the 25 books in Tamil, English and Malayalam on various aspects of yoga.

Spartan diet

He manages all this on a diet of just fruit juice. "Asanas and Pranayama provide enough energy to carry through the day," he says. People generally use just one-third of their lung capacity, he adds. By practising Pranayama and Asana, the capacity of the lungs can be expanded as a health promotion measure, claims the founder-director of the Asana Andiappan College of Yoga and Research Centre.

He has taken his yoga lessons abroad to Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. His wife Sugatha Kumari, son A. Yogananth and daughter Kumari Lakshmi are also into yoga.

Asana Andiappan was trained by Yogacharya S. Sundaram of Bangalore. He took voluntary retirement after a 30-year tenure as a stenographer in the court at Udhagamandalam and later in the Co-operative Department.

Later, he was instrumental is setting up a Yoga Ashram in Tirunelveli with help from the TVS group. The project was an outcome of an assignment he took up with the TVS group to teach yoga for its employees.

Asana Andiappan. — Photo: K. Pichumani

"One of the TVS directors went for a Ford company board meeting in 1972. Shortly after that, he directed all TVS staff to take part in a yoga training session conducted by an Indian Yogi. The director believed that employees trained in yoga took less leave, increased productivity by one third and coped with stress better."

The magic of music

"Music is an alternative route to a Yogic state," says Dr. Andiappan who passed his B.A. in Music last year.

Through the Research Centre, he has conducted training programmes for the Tamil Nadu Judicial Academy, Commando Force, Power Grid Corporation of India, Police Training College, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Repco Bank, among other institutions.

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