Either goalless life or purely materialistic approach to life is the basic cause of stress and tension in our time. The ’khao-piyo-jio’ approach that is imported from the west blindly is also causing increase in crime and corruption. Because if anybody and everybody thinks that life is a question of ‘belly and that below the belly’, he will be prepared to do anything irrespective of its being morally correct or not. This is also the reason why a welfare state can’t be built purely on secular basis through any ‘ism’.
Consequent to the time resource being the most scarce and fast life in metros, stress management has become a serious problem for all citizens especially for office goers, students and other mental workers. Many middleclass intellectuals guided by spiritual gurus today think ‘yoga’ can help overcome work stress and mental tension.
As can be made out even from the present day literature in its original form ‘Yoga’ meant ‘Communion with God’ and was a form of prayers comprising of specific ‘Asanas’ with appropriate ‘mantras’ to be pronounced. Timings for performing these ‘yogasanas’ were also fixed. But what is practised as yoga today is mere physical exercise at its best.
Salaat or Namaz also means ‘believers’ communion with God’ or ‘Momin’s Meraaj’ as it is well-known. However neither yoga nor any other previous form of prayers can replace ‘salaat’ as prayer, just as none of the previous scriptures can take the place of the latest version of ‘kitaab’ i.e. the Qur’ān.
Salaat or namaz is thus the latest version and form of ‘yoga’ and a sure cure for mental stress and tension provided we perform it properly and perfectly understanding and feeling every word of Arabic that we utter in the process.
Let us examine, for example, even uttering of Sura-e-Fatiha in its entirety once in every raka’t, wherein we besiege the Lord of the worlds to show us the right way.
The Islamic etiquette entails that you ‘trust in God but tie your camel’. When a believer does whatever he can within his capacity through ups and downs in his everyday life and then leaves the rest with his Lord to take care as above, he has no reason to be in tension or to feel stressful.
Even without actually performing the Salaat just going through a simple book on Salaat such as Salaah the Muslim Prayer (published by Islamic Book Service, New Delhi) convinces one about the tremendous ‘yogic’ or stress-relieving effect that the divine prayer can have on the body and mind of its performer.
Any general reader can also go through a simple word by word translation like that of Muhammed Marmduke Pickthal or of Abdullah Yusuf Ali or of M H Shakir (published by Goodword, Hazrat Nizamuddin, New Delhi) and feel the same relief. For example, in the Qur’ān (Verse No. 17:82) Allah the Exalted says: ‘We reveal of the Qur’ān that which is a healing and mercy…’
In addition there are numerous genuine books on prophetic supplications (‘masnoon duaen’) recommended for a wide range of everyday occasions in our lives.