We all know that Yoga can help mend the mind and body, but did you know it can also help you find your soulmate. With Valentine’s Day approaching, we have love on the mind and a new book that helps singles find love and couples sustain it. We caught up with author Vishwanath Iyer of YOGA & LOVE to get an insider look at how Yoga can help find your soulmate (yes, really!), how the practice changed his life and most importantly, how he realized Yoga can be used to fall in love.

Vishwanath and his wife, Deypika

Factio Magazine: How did Yoga change your life?
Vishwanath Iyer: Yoga is the best thing that has happened to me.  It transformed me from the inside out, most importantly it helped me to find romantic love and sustain it for the last almost 10 years that I have been married.

FM: How did you decide to make Yoga a main part of your life?
VI: Yoga and meditation are part of my cultural upbringing.  Every child born into my Brahmin lineage had to undergo training in Yoga meditation practices.  My true last name is Vashishta, who was supposedly the sage/author of one of the first Yoga books of India.  I was fairly casual about my Yoga practices until I came to America to study and stopped taking money from my parents.  With no money and at the same time not knowing anybody, I was forced to practice meditation for several hours every day, hoping the Higher power would help me.  I started receiving beautiful experiences, the bliss, the joy, the happiness, which Yogis talk about no longer was just theory. My money situation slowly started changing as well.  Now Yoga to me is as important as brushing my teeth or taking a shower.

FM: Without giving too much away, tell us about your new book!
VI: My book in one line is about, how to use Yoga to find love or an ideal Soulmate.  The book stands on the credibility of my own story of how I met my wife, Deypika, on a movie set 11 years ago.  Our story became famous in the media and people started asking me to help them find love.  So I took my childhood training, my heavy science background, and my personal experience of attracting my wife, and ultimately put a system together.

It took me almost four years to write my book, YOGA & LOVE.  It starts where the famous movie “The Secret” left off; though it doesn’t explain the actual mechanism by which you can activate the Law of Attraction.  For that you need systematic methods of meditation and pranayama (breathing practices) which effectively change you at the quantum level.  Once that dynamic energetic transformation happens on the inside, love on the outside, will automatically happen.

FM: What is one of the best things couples can take away after reading your book?
VI: The first thing couples or singles can take from the book is undeniable hope.  Hope is probably the most precious commodity in the romantic space in America.  People in general are jaded about relationships, as 1-in-2 people divorce.  That’s 50 percent!  I am here to say, true love does exist.  Ideal partners do exist.  Not a perfect partner, but an ideal partner.  There is no perfection in this world of duality.  Readers of YOGA & LOVE will learn why they keep falling in love, as well as failing in love, and learn what to do about it to get out of that vicious cycle.  My book offers several practical techniques for sustaining love once you have found it.  The mission with this book is to heal 15 million singles in the next two years.

FM: When did you realize people can use Yoga to fall in love?
VI: When it happened to me!!  I had learned from the Yoga scriptures and my spiritual teacher that you can practice certain powerful Yoga techniques, which will build enough magnetism in you for attracting your soulmate in six months.  The Yoga masters don’t mess around.  Just as a trainer can tell you, by working out and eating right you can be really fit in six months.  In the same way you can – through certain breathing, meditation, and positive affirmations – develop your mind and spirit to get ready for an awesome relationship in six months.  Of course all this was theory until the sixth month of practice when I found my wife on a movie set.  All the romance and drama and the experiences I went through are shared in my book.

FM: What are your favorite Yoga positions and why?
VI: My favorite Yoga positions are the headstand and any of the spinal stretching poses, like the plow or the seated-forward bend.  In Yoga the most important organs of your body are the brain and the spinal cord.  The headstand increases blood-flow to the brain which fills the brain with more oxygen.  This makes you think clearly, reduces stress, makes you calm and relaxed.  The spinal stretching helps with the natural curvature of the spine, prevents pinching of nerves along the spinal cord.

FM: What are the biggest misconceptions about Yogis?
VI: The first misconception about Yogis and/or Yoga, the collective whole of this practice, is that it is a bunch of physical poses.  When you think of Yoga, it is helpful to regard it as a whole pie of eight slices.  One slice is Hatha Yoga, or physical poses, which the West normally refers to as Yoga.  Then there are seven more slices.  The physical poses give you a great body.  The meditation and breathing exercises give you a great mind, as they also elevate your spirit.  The other misconception about the Yoga lifestyle is that it is only for spiritual New-Agey people who are delineated from reality.  No, it is extremely practical and is totally applicable in every day modern life, not just to reduce stress and look great, but also to find romantic love.

FM: Why should everyone practice Yoga?  Do you have a favorite type of yoga (which one and what do you love about it)?
VI: The cool thing is, Yoga is not cultural or some spiritual woo-woo of India.  It is based on science which means it will work for anyone – it doesn’t matter what stage of life you are in or what profession.  My favorite type of Yoga is the classical system of Patanjali which teaches the holistic development of body, mind and spirit, without ignoring one over the other.

FM: What are some of your top favorite benefits of Yoga?
VI: The obvious will be having a great body, calmness, and stress reduction.  There are two most important decisions in every human’s life.  If you get it right, life can be blissful… 1. To help you find love.  2. To help you find the right career, the one you are absolutely passionate about.  There are unknown benefits of Yoga which are the techniques to help you find love by consciously increasing the power of intuition to identify your ideal partner.  There are also several powerful tools to discover what you love to do.

FM: What are people surprised to know about you?
VI: That my first feature film as a romantic lead in Hollywood will be releasing this year.  My next one will be a romantic comedy which I am currently writing, where I will be starring opposite an A-list actress.  Some other surprises about me are, I make a killer chai, and have been trained in French theater.

To learn more about YOGA & LOVE and to buy the book, visit www.yogaandlove.com.