Ulcerative Colitis

Kriya—Hindu for "action," he tells me—is principally a sit-down affair, ideal for early morning, with none of the frantic leaping and twirling that characterizes yoga in the West.

You begin by scrunching up your toes, then rotating your ankles, and very incrementally progress toward headstands and backbends.

Punctuating the postures are forms of pranayama breathing, or "victorious breath," a rudiment of most yoga practices.

Every day after class, Prakash guarantees my attendance the next morning with grand claims about his discipline, equating Kriya yoga with perfect everlasting good health.

"You do Kriya yoga every day," he tells me, "you have no problem.""And if I already have a problem?

" I once venture to inquire.

"Like a neck or shoulder injury?

Will yoga fix it?

" Though I remain his only student, Prakash has displayed no great interest in my personal needs.

Or maybe my sentences are too ornate, for instead of answering, he repeats his original claim: "Yoga every day, no problem.

No sciatica, no tendonitis, no insomnia, no glandular problem, no sexual problem.

You understand?

No problem."A few days later, I pose the same question to an Israeli Iyengar teacher on the opposite bank of the Ganges.

If I spend the next year in downward-facing dog, will the bulging disks in my neck vanish?

Will I one day be ...

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