Untimely death of a yoga guru!

 Hi all,

         As this year is coming to end, let us all hope for reasonably pleasant and peaceful days for everyone around us. The news about the passing away of a yoga guru who was aged just 53 would have shook all of us just as it did to me. I was like, how could a yoga guru die so young!! He should have lived past his 90 years,  right?

             Sharath Jois,  a yoga 🧘‍♂️ master from Mysuru, who was on a tour to USA from October to conduct yoga workshops suddenly collapsed and died when he was hiking with a group. The reason was found out to be cardiac arrest. Though he was 'labelled as world famous' who taught yoga for some Hollywood celebrities, I have not heard of him and Iam sure many around me would not have heard of him. He was the grandson of established yoga guru Shri Pattabhi Jois and the family have Jois academy for yoga. These days, anyone goes and checks the social media to find out more information about personalities. He had less than 3 lakh followers in Instagram which was surprising as I have seen lesser known influencers having more than a million followers. His Instagram page gave me the story of his life. The sheer number of yoga 🧘‍♀️ workshops he was conducting over a span of years in different countries across the world 🌎 for many years without giving his own body some rest should have taken a toll on him! If his body came out and spoke about the reason for its own perishing,  it would lay the doubts to rest for people who knew him and also for many others like me! There were details of his upcoming workshops in San Antonio, Dubai,  Sydney in coming months which will not see the light of the day! There were lots of tributes pouring in for him from different parts of the world and much less from India! I read somewhere that  he used to work about 7 to 8 hours a day. He used to wake up by 1 AM in the morning and do his own routine yoga before his students turn up by 3:30 AM ! Doesn't that border the extreme? The circadian rhythm of sleep 😴 is disturbed every day  that will destroy the benefits of yoga 🧘‍♂️ he had been practicing for years. This could have proved fatal for his life span. The Jois academy that was run by him after his grandfather's death had about 5000 students registering every month and there were not enough staff to handle the workload adding to his stress. 

          From You tube

          In India, the simple act of restful sleep is sidelined over excessive workload and 'hardwork' to be in the forefront. A cyclist named Anil Kadsur died in his 40s due to excessive cycling (100 km) for 5 years early in the morning daily without a break of single day and it would have killed him! We have CEOs who glorify excessive work that have killed the likes of Anna Sebastian of E & Y. We have personalities like Narayana Murthy who endorses 70 hr work week and does not believe in work-life balance. So the act of slowing down to catch a breather/spend quality time with our families are looked down. People are under constant pressure to keep themselves 'busy' at the cost of their own health. 

       Anyway,  coming back to Sharath Jois, he was was easily forgotten by the  Indian  media or received very less attention than what he deserved. His maternal grandfather who was a yoga master lived upto 90s, his mother who may be in her 80s and also a yoga instructor still lives on.  But this man's fate was different! 

P.S.....I saw some comments that COVID vaccines could also have caused his death....this of course,  cannot be verified fully...

Deepa.