Yoga Yoga recently participated in a national research project on the benefits and practice of yoga. Many cool things were discovered but the finding that jumped out at me were the two major reasons people gave for not doing yoga: 1) Not enough time, and 2) Not enough money.

It reminded me of the time when I told my junior high school coach that I could not do 100 sit-ups right now because I had just eaten a particularly putrid cafeteria meal. "That's your excuse, Benton," he growled. "Now give me a reason."

So when people tell me they don't have enough time or money, I know it is only an excuse for the real reason they don't do yoga. So here is the unforgiving truth about their pathetic excuses, just like Coach Franklin once told me.

Believe it or not, people have been having trouble doing yoga for hundreds of years. It got so bad that the ancient yogis actually classified the five reasons people failed in a yoga practice.

They called these five reasons "Kleshas" which loosely translates as "obstacles" or more literally as "afflictions." They are considered to be the five obstacles to a yoga practice and indeed the root of all suffering.

Patanjali first codified these obstacles to yoga in the Yoga Sutras (Book II, 3) around two thousand years ago. In brief they are:

1. Ignorance
2. Self-centeredness
3. Attachment to pleasure
4. Aversion to pain
5. Fear

Working from the bottom up, people are afraid to change. They have a fear of the unknown and the new and would often rather stick with the devil they know (in this case, their limited experience of reality) rather than opening up to new possibilities. Make no mistake. Yoga is about change. You will change when you do yoga and most people are fundamentally afraid of change.

Aversion to pain seems like a healthy trait rather than an obstacle or affliction, but it goes along with the fear to change. Change brings growth. Growth brings pain as we lose the old self. Again, most people would rather remain in a comfortable state of suffering with their familiar problems than take the initially painfully step into real growth.

Attachment to pleasure is the desire to lose oneself in the glittery yet ultimately shallow experiences of distraction. Life should indeed be pleasurable, but for most people they settle instead for little pleasures. They pleasure themselves over and over again yet never feel fully satisfied.

Self-centeredness is the all-consuming focus on the small self to the exclusion of the Higher Self and the welfare of others. It is the wholesale feeding of the ego while starving the spirit. It is the false idol we worship when God is actually standing right beside us.

And finally there is ignorance, the king of all afflictions for it is because of ignorance, avidya (actually translated as lack of knowledge) that we suffer from all the other obstacles and do not do yoga. We are simply ignorant of our true nature.

People do not do yoga because they do not have the time or money. They do not do yoga because they are ignorant, fearful, self-centered and lazy. Prove me wrong and I will certainly apologize.

The busiest, the most successful, yes even the incredibly and insanely overbooked people in world, find time for themselves. The current president rides a bicycle and the vice-president kills birds. Ghandi had time for his own meditation every day of his life. Mother Theresa never skipped prayer time.

And yoga does not have to take an hour or so. Yoga can be done in as little as 5 minutes a day. When you do not spend any time in front of a tv set or surf the internet or worry about your problem of the week, then you can perhaps complain about the few minutes a day yoga will steal from your very busy life.

Money of course is the best excuse. Who ever has enough? Yet it is the absolutely wrong excuse for not doing yoga. For one thing, yoga does not cost money. You can practice what you know for free in your home.

If you want to spend money on yoga (and you know I hope you do), do the math. At the most, a regular weekly yoga practice will cost you less than $15 a week. A daily practice - every day! - is less than $25 a week.

But the real kicker is this - whatever you pay for yoga, you will get at least twice as much money back. Yes, you make money when you do yoga. This is true.

In the 35 years I have practiced and taught yoga, one thing I have noticed is that people who do yoga regularly spend significantly less money on health-related expenses. They spend less on over the counter drugs, prescription drugs, doctor visits, chiropractic visits, and all the associated healthcare costs that come about. They lose less money from down time at work. And they spend less money on things like alcohol, drugs, and other self-indulgent escape mechanisms when they do yoga.

A guy in our yoga teacher training program once told me that he paid for his entire course by just not drinking in bars for the year he did the course.

And when you factor in the health care costs of major illnesses that yoga helps prevent, you will find that for every dollar you spend on yoga, you are saving two to ten dollars at least. If you divide the number of hours you spend in a yoga class by the amount of money you are truly saving, you will find you are making at least $25 a hour when you do yoga.

So no money, no time, and no kidding. What's your excuse for not doing yoga? There is no reason. Thanks, coach.

Click here to read past articles from Mehtab!