The gurukul of the sage Dhaumya was known across the land for the calm, bright faces of its students — and visitors often wondered what the secret was. There was no secret, the old sage would say. There was only a well-balanced day, lived again and again.

Listen to how a day there unfolded. The boys rose with the first light, rested and clear-eyed, for they had slept enough but not too long. They washed in the cool stream and ate a simple morning meal — enough to carry them, never enough to make them dull and drowsy.

Then came study. They recited and questioned and listened, working their minds hard — but when the sun climbed high, the lessons stopped. The boys ran to the meadow and the river. They wrestled and swam and chased each other through the long grass, laughing, their bodies as busy now as their minds had been before. Play balanced study; the river balanced the books.

A midday meal, again simple and sufficient. A short rest in the shade. More learning in the gentler afternoon light, then chores done with willing hands — fetching water, tending the cows, sweeping the yard. Their efforts were steady and measured, never frantic, never lazy.

As dusk fell, they gathered for the evening fire, and here was the heart of it all: with bodies pleasantly tired but not exhausted, with bellies content but not heavy, with minds worked but also rested, the boys sat to meditate. And their meditation came easily. There was no over-full sleepiness to fight, no hunger to gnaw, no restlessness from a day spent idle. Balanced in food and play, in work and rest, in sleeping and waking, they settled into stillness as naturally as the birds settling into the trees.

"You see," Dhaumya told a visiting traveller, watching the calm row of young faces glowing in the firelight, "I give them no magic. I give them only a balanced day. And on such a day, the practice itself quietly carries away their troubles. A life kept in good measure is what makes yoga the healer of sorrow."