The secret to becoming ageless

Samadhi is the source of youthfulness. It acts like the refrigerator of your life; it is the secret to bubbling enthusiasm and the secret to life’s renewal.

Yoga is not just asanas; it is a way of life. Like a flower bud, human life has the potential to blossom fully. The blossoming of human potential to fullness is yoga. It is the way to much-needed happiness.

Maharishi Patanjali, a prolific scientist and seer who codified the vast wisdom of yoga in simple Yoga Sutras, gave the eight limbs of yoga: yama (restraint), niyama (observance), asana (postures), pranayama (regulation of breath), pratyahara (substitute food for the mind), dharana (ability of the mind to focus), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (higher states of consciousness).

There is a big misconception among many yoga students. They understand yoga, or the eight limbs of Yoga, as a step-by-step process for moving from one level to the next. They think that one has to strive to become proficient in one level before ascending to the next. This is not really so.

A chair has four legs, and if you pull on one leg, the whole chair will move. Similarly, when the body is developing, the whole body develops together; organs develop together; it is not that the nose develops first and then the ears come. That is why Patanjali called them the limbs of Yoga, not stages to be achieved one after another. The limbs are not sequential; they are parts of the whole.

Here, we discuss one of these eight limbs, Samadhi. It is significant because in one moment of Samadhi, there are a million years of rest. It is this profound rest that renews life, restores enthusiasm, and keeps one youthful from within.

‘Sama’ means equanimity. ‘Dhi’ is the intellect, the faculty that sustains you, the faculty of consciousness. And equanimity, Patanjali tells us, is not a spiritual achievement far away somewhere in the distance. It is the very source of youthfulness. Samadhi is like the refrigerator of your life, the secret of bubbling enthusiasm, and the renewal of life.

People imagine inner steadiness means going underground and not breathing, or fasting and becoming skinny, or applying ash all over. These are wrong ideas about Samadhi.

The key to understanding equanimity lies in something we observe every day. When your senses are trembling, it disturbs your peace. Like someone who switches on a radio and, every few minutes, keeps tuning to different stations without fully listening to a single song, the mind gallops from one sensory experience to the next.

Even when the senses are engaged for a few minutes, they grow tired. Then, you are unable to enjoy or perceive any experience at all. This trembling of the senses is what wears you down.

Have you noticed how a child stares at things with depth, and their eyes do not flicker? This indicates steadiness and stability of the soul. The eyes are the windows through which the world sees the soul, and they reflect its steadiness.

Your appearance, your walk, your behaviour, your words, and your entire life reflect what you are deep inside.

When the consciousness which holds an experience, the object it holds, and the senses through which it holds are all in harmony, that is the state of inner steadiness. The eyes, the ears, and every instrument of the senses become keen and crystal clear.

But this can happen only when the mind is not going on its own trip of regret, anger, anticipation, wrong knowledge, fantasy, and memory. When you look at a mountain, you just do not look at it as it is. Something is added to it from within you. You are not seeing things as they are, but seeing through your memory, seeing through comparison, and that layering is what robs life of its freshness.

You can experiment. For a few moments, keep your body and your eyes steady, and you will see, almost immediately, that the mind will also become steady.

When the senses grow steady in this way, you become like a crystal, which exists but lets light pass through it totally. Then, when you look at a flower, you are not just looking at it; you are touching it, feeling the flower, and listening to it. All your senses become totally active. Every sensory experience becomes very bright, colourful, and complete.

Ageing gracefully is about cultivating stillness within. Through steadiness of body, breath, and mind, Yoga nurtures emotional resilience, renews enthusiasm, and helps us experience each moment with greater clarity and aliveness.

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