After co-authoring 50 books on yoga, including Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and How to Reverse Heart Disease, Dr Hansa is now the proud author of the just released, The 12 Yogic Principles for Making Marriages Work. The slim, 130-pager (Rupa Publications) launched by former president Pranab Mukherjee last month, offers guidance on "how to be marriage-ready, not just wedding ready". Dr Hansa clarifies that it's not asanas that will help you achieve the goal. Because yoga is more than just gravity-defying postures. "Yoga is also about habits, attitude and values," she says. She has tried to mend broken hearts and has been successful at all times but one. "It was a Canadian couple with grown up children. They respected each other but had fallen out of love. They wanted to go their separate ways, follow their own calling. One wanted to head to the mountains, the other was keen to turn entrepreneur. It was best that they parted."

Dr Hansa's cardinal rule is to sign up for marriage only if you find the right person. "Else, don't bother," she shrugs. To make it easier to navigate, she has divided the book into categories of in-laws, health, money and children, and so on. Here, for the sake of brevity, she picks her favourite four tips.

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Marry to better yourself Most people get married believing that it is an opportunity to influence and change their partner's behaviour. If people did it instead, believing that it could be an opportunity to learn and better themselves, more marriages would be successful. After all, it is the ability to re-engineer your own self that separates humans from animals. Only humans can aspire, if anyone, to be better humans. You will never hear a cat wanting to be a better cat.

It will all be gone anyway Yoga helps you realise that everything is impermanent...therefore, don't get attached to anybody or anything. Never nurse your ego by convincing yourself that you are superior. Only do your duty and live in the moment.

Say it nicely Words matter, how they are uttered, matters. Call a person a fool and he will blow his top. Put your arm around him and tell him gently to stop being a fool, and you will have him eating out of your hand. Same message, different effect.

It's not always about you According to yoga, you aren't the one around whom the universe revolves. Marriage is an opportunity to learn humility, to learn to walk in another's shoes, to learn to become sensitive to another's feelings. Remember that the universe revolves around each and every person.

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