Ancient spiritual techniques that can help mental well-being today, from a scholar of yoga psychology
- Dr Ramesh Pattni has been researching psychological techniques embedded in ancient spiritual texts to improve modern meditation and yoga practices
- He says treatments like cognitive behavioural therapy and positive psychology have roots in practices recorded thousands of years ago
As a teenager growing up in Kenya, Dr Ramesh Pattni was interested in Hindu scriptures. He was particularly interested in the ancient text known as The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, a collection of 196 Indian aphorisms on the theory and practice of yoga. It was the notion of gaining superpowers through yogic practice that really grabbed him.
“To my teenage mind this was fantastic – it talked of powers like being in two places at the same time,” he says, speaking by phone from India.
Pattni, who maintains a regular yoga practice, hasn’t developed any supernatural powers – not yet anyway – but says his psychological condition and well-being have developed tremendously thanks to yoga and meditation.
Today he is one of the most accomplished global scholars of yoga psychology. His research lies at the intersection of theology and the science of psychology. According to him, religion and contemporary psychology have a lot more in common than people may think.
Born and raised in Kenya, Pattni graduated from King’s College London in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and physiology. If he’d had his way, he would have gone on to do research in neuroscience and was already enrolled in a PhD. But duty called. The family business was expanding, and he was wanted back in Kenya to help manage it. That became his life for 23 years, his academic dreams pushed aside.
“Throughout those years, I didn’t lose insight into spirituality or my passion for learning,” he says. “When I came back to the UK in 2001, I’d had enough of business and wanted to follow my passion, and came back to my interest in teaching and learning.”