A LETTER FROM LONDON: Yoga so vital that it may soon be prescribed by doctors

I remember when I used to live in Dar es Salaam in the early 1980s.

One afternoon, a man called Juma and his wife, Sada, held a meeting which I was part of. Those days we only had two national newspapers.

Luckily, I managed to report about that minor gathering at Jamhuri Street, in my Sunday News column.

I do not know if there are any records left of the historical incident. Our country is not that brilliant at keeping documented relics.

The incident was not big news...

What was it?

Yoga.

It is almost 35 years now and I still doubt if the majority of my country folk know what the heck this word means. A few still equate yoga with anti religious sentiments. Some Christians (even in the USA and Europe) freak out at yoga. So misconstrued and misinformed.

Those days we had a few Tanzanian Asians in the group, and even Jamhuri Street was predominantly Asian. Don’t know about 2017. To the majority folk, yoga was, and still is, an Indian thing.

For several years prior to the 1983 Jamhuri Street encounter, I had been a fan of South Asian martial arts, i.e. Japanese karate.

The euphoria and appetite for martial arts was boosted by films of Bruce Lee bursting across global screens after his early death aged only 32 in 1973. Bruce Lee created jute kune do which he assembled after a long time practising wing chun, kung fu – the Chinese combat forms – and other martial arts. But we in Tanzania would not learn wing chun or kung fu. We were mesmerised by karate.

What is karate?

Pronounced “kara tay”, it is a Japanese word signifying kara (empty) and te (hands), meaning fighting without weapons. The idea developed when Japanese people developed self-defence methods utilising kicks, punches and so on while colonised. This is akin to the way slaves in Brazil developed capoeira martial arts (disguised as dance and acrobatics) to counter Portuguese slavery and colonialism 300 years ago.

So then...

There are various styles of karate.

From Korea most common are taekwondo and hapkido; while Japan has shotokan, wado ryu, goju ryu, etc.

The African-American goju ryu teacher Sensei Bomani (now deceased) introduced goju ryu in Tanzania in 1973. I was one of the few zealous Dar es Salaam youths who benefited from his teachings. Apart from fitness, Bomani’s classes entailed health awareness information. The exuberant Bomani was not just a martial arts instructor and expert, he was a committed politically conscious worker, who saw the craft as a way of helping Africans progress. For example, he trained young fighters preparing to go back to South Africa, Zimbabwe (and so on) to liberate their communities from racists.

Bomani not only learnt Kiswahili, he married a Tanzanian woman in Kariakoo and loved ugali. He taught us to respect elders, be courteous in the community and “mind what we eat...” Bomani died in Ghana in 2008 aged only 63.

Thanks to this amazing role model, I still try to keep fit. The blogger Michuzi is among several Tanzanian beneficiaries. You can see the working discipline through his success.

After a few years training goju ryu and researching, reading and talking to other people, I stumbled upon Indian hatha yoga, which continues to nourish my life.

When Juma and Sada steered the beginnings of yoga in Tanzania I was happy because it is such a useful form of exercise. So valuable that most top world football clubs introduce it in their daily routine to balance the hard, run, fall and tumble regimes.

Many top athletes and celebrities (like Madonna) practise yoga not only for inner power but to relieve back pain, chronic injuries and other physical problems. Yoga may also aid to combat stress, balance circulation, high blood pressure; relieve pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS) in women, depression, constipation, period pain, obesity, asthma symptoms, but most of all revitalise the body’s inner and external natural posture and beauty.

In most exercises, the body just moves.

With yoga, you have to combine slow movements, stretches alongside pauses while focusing on your breathing. These long rests, plus deep slow inhalation-exhalation, assist regulating the heart, brain, spine and other vital organs. The result is nourishment.

This week it was reported that there are almost half a million people practising 30 minutes of yoga weekly in the UK. The rise and rise of stress and its related strains, has prompted suggestions that yoga be incorporated in clinical treatment through doctors’ prescription possibly parallel to, (or instead of) medication.

There are various types of yoga. Most common is hatha.

And of course you need a qualified, certified instructor to learn. Meantime start peeping at YouTube to have elementary knowledge.

Yes and naam! We all need yoga.