I am an Australian visiting Bangalore to meet with old students and devotees of Swami Muktananda, who taught yoga in Bangalore from 1978 to 1985.  Together with Swami Buddhananda she established the Atma Darshan Yogashram which still provides yoga programs to this day.

My friend Sw. Yogaratna explained to me that she had offered to take yoga classes with the children at a cancer hospital after learning about them from her friend Sandhya, who runs an NGO providing educational services to the children (Samiksha Foundation).

Swami Yogaratna offered to take me to the ward and I was very happy to accompany her.  She is very proficient at using the Bangalore public transport system, jumping on and off buses and in and out of autorickshaws with the ease of an old Bangalore wallah, a sometimes hair raising experience for an Australian.

The Children’s Ward is in a separate building in the extensive hospital grounds.  The ward impressed as it was spacious, airy and clean with high quality tiling on the floors: in Australia we don’t have such excellent quality tiling as you have in Bangalore.  Sandhya told us that eighty percent of the children in this ward have blood cancers.

Sw. Yogaratna gathered the children by going through the wards singing a simple song.  She has found that this is the most successful technique of attracting the children away from the TV and other diversions, a bit like a Yogi Pied Piper.

After 20 minutes or so she had collected a group of up to 17 children, together with some mothers.  Some of the smaller children were coming and going: as well as being very sick they are easily distracted like all small children are.  However the door watchman helped by shepherding errant children back into the group.

Sw. Yogaratna started the class by getting them to chant Om and sing a couple of simple songs .  Next she took them through the Pawanmuktasana series of simple yoga exercises, to warm them up and improve their flexibility. This was followed by a short talk introducing the next part of the class, the Yoga Nidra (yogic relaxation).

Sw. Yogaratna commenced this by asking the children to lie down on the floor in a radial pattern, with their feet in the centre.  After much wriggling and giggling the children managed this.  She then instructed them to feel into the sensation of their body lying on the floor, and to feel inside the body, looking for any sensations such as the breath.  Some children reported being aware of their blood circulation.

The visualisation part came next.  The children were asked to visualise their white blood cells fighting and killing the cancer cells, and the red blood cells recovering in huge numbers, both together driving away the ‘bad guys’, the cancer cells.  Each child was asked to visualise this in their own particular way.

After the yoga nidra was finished, the children were asked to draw a picture of their visualisation experience.  These were very varied.  One little girl drew a big shark, the white blood cells, chasing two small fish, the cancer cells.  Another girl drew circles of equal size, happy ones (the whites) and sad ones (cancers).  One boy drew a crocodile chasing a turtle, two other boys had tigers attacking deer and rabbits, A third girl drew some ducks eating small insects.  Sw. Yogaratna complimented the children for their efforts and offered some suggestions as to how to improve and clarify the images that the children had so beautifully created.  The yoga session was completed with Om chanting, some of the children demonstrating great flexibility by sitting in Padmasana, one of the most difficult yoga poses.

Sw. Yogaratna explained to me afterwards that she was incorporating techniques of ‘art therapy’ into the yoga nidra visualisation.  The reference she uses is ‘Getting Well Again’ by Carl Simonton.  Her feedback to the children was based on the research described in his book.

At the end the children jostled each other to have their photos taken, checking my photography technique after each photo to make sure I got them looking their best!  Then we reluctantly said goodbye.  All in all it was a delightful experience, or as we say in Australia, ‘awesome’.  If you have a chance please think of joining the Samiksha Foundation with Sw. Yogaratna in this very worthwhile project.

John Ransley