Omega: Can you describe the basic principle of your yoga practice?
Madan: I’ve been teaching, researching, and coming up with new insights since 1969. Yoga has much more to offer than we think. We have the finest technology available on this planet in our own body. The body writes its own prescription from moment to moment. Just think about when we go into deep sleep, there’s nothing to be done, nothing to be fixed. Everything is being done for us.
I use the principle of automated technology, instead of paying attention to alignment, or the adjustment of the hips, or flexibility, which has become the focus in North America. Flexibility is obviously necessary, but the main principle I use is that consciousness is a processing center, just like computer technology.
Just as we punch information into the computer and we get the right answer, we can do the same through the power of intention with our body. The answer doesn’t come in language, but it comes in feelings. There’s a precise feedback system in our own body. We are not in touch with it because we have a scattered mind. When the mind is focused and calm, we can communicate within the body, and the feedback that we get is far more sophisticated, more accurate than MRIs and all the other technology that we know of.
The most advanced computer processes three to five billion bits of information per second, but our body can process six or more trillion bits of information per second. I focus on that. I’m focusing on inner journey rather than external techniques and adjustments.
Our body has abilities of the kind that we don’t even know of, unless we pay attention to how to use the power that we already have in us, which has gone into a dormant state. That power can be activated through yoga methodology. It’s a very systematic, structured approach. When you do the postures and breathing, they’re not for their own sake. Each step we have in the eight limbs of yoga is designed to shift us into a higher level of awareness.