“What life holds for you, you certainly don't know, and the same happened to me many years ago. I remember I was down with a bad cold, and days just passed by but no medicines worked on me. That's when my father encouraged me to join yoga to cure my cold. In 1973, I joined a yoga institution that was 20 minutes away from my home. 

I dedicatedly learnt yoga from Guruji there and day by day my curiosity about yoga kept growing. I accompanied Guruji in his classes, and sometimes I got the chance to conduct the classes. I used to go to the institute every day at sharp 5 a.m and just had two holidays in the whole year. Many people joined and left yoga due to pain, but I knew one thing, "pain is temporary, the gain is permanent."

As I became confident about yoga, I started taking part in yoga competitions. Overall, I participated in more than 50 yoga competitions and won several of them in different states. But being selected for the National level was a real problem as the inside coordinators/people were biased towards their known people and only selected them. That scenario made me sad but it didn't demotivate me, in fact, it boosted me to fly higher. 

I constantly worked hard towards my goal and practised Kapalbhati Pranayama daily without any excuses. Finally, the day arrived when I was all ready to set a new record. In 2017, at the age of 65, I broke the India Book of Records by performing Kapalbhati Pranayama for non-stop 1hr 21minutes. I received the certificate from the honourable Deputy Commissioner of Mysore, and my name was written in the India Book of Records.

I started doing yoga at the age of 19. I pursued Diploma in Yoga Therapy (D.Y.T) in the year 2018. Today at 70, I am still strongly connected to yoga/meditation and desire to break more records. Also, I would like to say one thing to all my fellow seniors; engage themselves in yoga/meditation or at least some exercises and daily walk.” - M.P. Ramesh Babu (Khyaal Community Member)