Once upon a time, boring people did yoga. Oh! So old fashioned cool people thought and experimented with everything that was imported from pilates to zumba, aerobics to tai chi.
And then there was a gradual turnaround. New age gurus found young, happening followers and political endorsements.
Bollywood beauties too made a beeline for this ancient wellness discipline. Yoga studios proliferated. Shows on TV channels and columns in newspapers by experts ushered in a renewed concept of wellness of which yoga was an inextricable part.
On June 21, 2015, we celebrated the first World Yoga Day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had spoken about creating World Yoga Day in his maiden speech at the UN General Assembly in 2014. The international body granted him the wish. A yoga practitioner himself, he led Yoga Day at Rajpath.
We are celebrating the second edition of World Yoga Day, which is marked by events, events and more events. If someone is getting people to come to Cubbon Park to practise yoga with sticks, another academy has come up with the novel idea of moonlight yoga.
Slickly repackaged with novel ideas, yoga is being made to look easy and attractive. On June 19, yoga instructor Regeesh Vattakandy introduced yoga with sticks. Regeesh was expecting 30 people for the class held at 7:30 a.m at Cubbon Park but 50 turned up. And now he has been asked to hold one more session of yoga with sticks next week. In the deluge of events happening around Yoga Day, he wanted his to stand out. And it helped that like Iyengar School of yoga, Vinyasa too allows for props to be used.
Speaking of the reasons for introducing sticks, Regeesh says, “One is variety, which the mind likes and second is that sticks let you go deeper into your posture.” Enthused by the response, the yoga teacher is now thinking of introducing it in the three branches of Aayana Yoga Academy in HSR Layout, Jayanagar and Whitefield.
Sumit Chadha, an IT professional and a yoga practitioner too desires everyone to benefit from yoga like he did to battle stress, erratic lifestyle and overweight. And World Yoga Day became a perfect platform to achieve this.
On June 19, a full moon day, Sumit presented a different facet of yoga to the visitors through a session of moonlight yoga. Meditation, relaxation, light exercises and sound therapy marked the affair held in the open at Decathlon in Sarjapur. Sumit thinks it is a good way to introduce yoga to the uninitiated. “What about people who have never done yoga? For them yoga means difficult asanas, which makes it intimidating. But yoga is not just this. It is also about breathing right. And I chose the full moon day because you don't do intense asanas that day. One only does chandra namaskara and light asanas. It is a good sight. Under the moonlit sky, listening to the sounds emanating from Himalayan bowls of copper and tin and meditating, it rejuvenates you.”
Yoga doesn’t have a concept of moon light yoga but there exists chandra namaskara. Add to it the significance of full moon day and bring in the elements of Tibetan chanting and you have an interesting package.
Pradeep Gowda began the countdown to World Yoga Day, 15 days ago in his six studios of a1000 yoga in Bengaluru. Free yoga sessions and talks in offices and schools were aimed at taking yoga to people in his initiative called 1000 beginnings.
And today, there will be a 12 hour non-stop yoga marathon at the studio with all its practitioners and students keeping up the momentum. Even the overseas students will join it virtually. “The whole initiative is about 1000 enablings or beginnings of maybe inspiring someone to get back to yoga, to start it. We are also interested in enabling the eco-system around it,” says Gowda.
“The world we live in today is full of competition. Everyone is seeking attention and when a brand or a product which is harmful for health has no qualms is doing so why shouldn’t yoga, which is beneficial to people, be promoted,” Gowda says responding to purists who might scoff at the dilution of yoga.
Suhasini Sampath and Anindita Sampath, who were associated with a1000yoga have used the opportunity of a day like this to introduce yoga bars — said to be a healthy snack bar rich in fibre, protein, Omega 3, Omega 6, antioxidants and other nutritious ingredients — for yoga practitioners.
Another novel idea is chair yoga by Kites for senior citizens. A geriatric and senior care specialist, Kites focuses on the primary healthcare of elders. The institute recently started with chair yoga for those who can’t sit on the floor and perform asanas. On World Yoga Day, Kites decided to create a noise about it by having organizing one free session of chair yoga in HSR Layout. Meera Narayanan, a certified yoga instructor says they have been training people in chair yoga to do it along with the elderly. “The idea is to make it easy. Not everyone can sit on the floor. So, we are saying it is okay if you can not, we will help you do it on a chair. And there are lot of asanas that can be done sitting on a chair.”
