New Delhi: With International Yoga Day being celebrated on June 21, the administration is all geared up to facilitate creating another Guinness record for highest number of people performing yoga at one single venue.
Yoga brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve a peaceful body and mind; it helps manage stress and anxiety and keeps you relaxing. It also helps in increasing flexibility, muscle strength and body tone. It improves respiration, energy and vitality. It can transform your day in just five minutes. Despite these endless benefits youth today is more obsessed with gym.
India at present has been subject to a large number of heart diseases, cancer, diabetes, that too predominantly in the middle-aged population. With changes in the lifestyles and growing number of illness exercising plays a vital role in staying both physically and mentally fit.
There are many forms of exercises which are easier to practice and highly effective in keeping one fit. Some find pleasure in cycling and jogging. Many people find it easier and convenient to spend an hour or two in doing work out in a well-equipped gym. With many health benefits yoga and meditation are also gaining popularity now.
The most trending options amongst all are yoga and gyming these days. Some swear yoga is the best way to keep fit. Others say they’d collapse without the gym.
With Yoga providing endless health benefits like inner peace, cardio-respiratory fitness and body’s flexibility, boosts immunity and even prevents many diseases. Despite all these benefits, youth of today especially in the Delhi NCR region loves hitting gym. They are well aware about yoga and its benefits but still they prefer working out in well-equipped gym. The question here is why the youth of national capital still is not attracted towards yoga.
“I love going to gym. It not only makes me feel healthy but also very strong. When I started gyming it instantly gave me results, with every day I felt every part of my body progressed differently. With Yoga I don’t think I would have
got such an instant result.” Says Sachin Gupta, a gymholic from Mukherjee Nagar.
Gyms have given various trending options amongst youth today. It has driven the rise of 'fitspiration' on social networks, whereby youngsters post images of flawlessly athletic bodies alongside mantras such as 'fit is the new thin', 'sweat is just fat crying' and 'nothing looks as good as healthy'.
If you visit the Fitspo Facebook page, which has more than 6,500 'likes', you are greeted by pictures of sinewy, lithe teenagers, many of them providing 'selfies' of their six-pack abs or toned biceps beneath the strapline 'strong is the new skinny'.
Up to a point, this trend is good, because it gets some teenagers to become more active, but it could lead to developing an unhealthy obsession with exercise.
In girls, an obsession with exercise can rise from feelings of self-loathing and fear of weight gain. It may also be driven by girls comparing themselves with what they consider to be physically perfect bodies. For boys, bulking up provides a masculine appearance to impress girls.
The internet age has also caused us to compare ourselves to others and it has resulted in youth getting inspired a lot by the gym culture.
“We are now in a time when doing everyday workouts or eating good-for-you food needs to be validated by a post. You snap a sweaty selfie after a particularly hard hitting gym sesh, and as those likes roll in you feel like it is more rewarding sometimes than the workout itself. It becomes an addiction to getting recognition and further motivation from social media, and not from an internal force.” Says AkhilChandan, Personality and Fitness Trainer, Black Iron Gym, Gurgaon.
“And while we think we are doing what’s good for our body, we sometimes get caught up in striving to look like a celeb, a YouTuber or someone we follow on Instagram. I catch myself at times thinking, “I do the same routine as x, why don’t I have the same abs/arms/legs/waist?” This is when fitness turns aesthetic, which shouldn’t ever be the main goal. Being “fit” is about being healthy. It’s what your body craves, not your mirror.” He further added.
Yoga has given people a lot of physical and mental stability. It holds miraculous power to heal many diseases and illness. Despite this higher number of youth hit gym to achieve their fitness goal, reason probably is specific type of set goals be it muscle building, weight training, toned physique etc. Gyming gives instant results whereas yoga takes a little time. Sometimes it also is the peer pressure or the celebrity lifestyle which forces youth to gym. They find yoga a little old fashioned and with a slower approach which lacks visible results on the body when performed. This all makes it hard for youth to opt yoga and there is no harm to choose any one the physical activity to achieve fitness be it yoga, gyming or even swimming.