Indian community urges locals to embrace yoga

The Indian High Commissioner to Uganda Shri Ravi Shankar has urged the Ugandan community to embrace Yoga sessions in their daily lives in order to help fight off different lifestyle diseases.

India High Commissioner to Uganda, Ravi Shankar, leads the Jinja Indian community in yoga at SDM temple in Jinja. Photo by Donald Kirya

Officiating at the Yoga International Festival event that was first held at the SDM temple in Jinja, Shankar said the Indian community should popularise the event throughout the country so that the locals see and enjoy the benefits associated with it

"This event started in India. It was lost but the initiative of our Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi has brought it back to the international stage," Shankar told several yoga enthusiasts who included the locals from Jinja and other parts of Uganda gathered at the SDM temple. 

He said yoga which started in India had been continuously practiced abroad but forgotten in India until the Prime Minister's intervention.

Yoga is a 5,000-year-old physical, mental and spiritual practice with its origin in India, whose major aim is to transform both body and mind. Several participants in Jinja were taken through the different Yoga drills by two instructors; Bhumi Mehta and Rukimini Bonthala.

On December 11 2014, the United Nations General Assembly declared June 21st as the International Day of Yoga after the Indian Prime Minister presented a paper on the benefits of Yoga.

Speaking at the same function, the general manager of Nile Ply, Probhat KuSingh, also urged the locals to embrace the Yoga sessions calling them a free medicinal cure.

He said there were a lot of benefits associated with participating in Yoga sessions and those who participate benefit from relaxation, meditation, and other contemplative practices.

"Don't waste money buying medicine and yet you can get cured through exercising and participating in Yoga," he stressed.

Singh who was among the local organizers of the event said that 80 of most prevalent lifestyle diseases were as a result of poor food habits and stress that could best be managed by yoga.

The third edition of the International Yoga Day will be held today across the world.

However the Indian Community in Uganda has planned to hold two sessions in Mbale on the June 24 and in Kampala on June 25th.