Mangaluru: For 5,000 years, hardcore yoga practitioners have been touting yoga’s mental and physical powers. Luckily, you don’t have to be an expert to reap the benefits — adding just a few poses to your daily routine can help your health in all kinds of unexpected ways. On a physical level, yoga can help you improve flexibility, strength, balance, and endurance. On an energetic level, yoga teaches you how to cope better with stress by cultivating a sense of ease in both active or passive poses. On a psychological level, yoga helps to cultivate mindfulness by shifting your awareness to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that accompany a given pose or exercise.
As part of International Day of Yoga, which will be celebrated on June 21, Dakshina Kannada District International Yoga Day Committee, along with other organizations, inaugurated a 7-day Free Health Yoga camp for Senior Citizens on June 14, at Sanghanikethan here. Dr Prabha Adhikari from KMC inaugurated the yoga camp, with other dignitaries o the dais namely – Kokkodi Padmanabha, Srinath Hegde, Shankaranarayana Shastri, Dr Ansuya Devi, and Mangala Bhat.
Welcome address was delivered by S Krishnamurthy where he said, ” Yoga activities will be held in nearly 200 places across the district starting from today with trained yoga teachers teaching yoga aspirants issues prescribed in the common yoga protocol prescribed by the union ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH). A session was held this morning at 6am for yoga teachers, which was inaugurated by Capt. Ganesh Karnik. We are expecting over 5000 participants during this week long camp, with a valedictory to be held at Sanghanikethan on June 21, to mark Vishwa Yoga Dinacharane (International Yoga Day”.
In her speech Dr Prabha Adhikari gave details as to how Yoga could benefit health in many ways. “Yoga can improve your flexibility. Improved flexibility is one of the first and most obvious benefits of yoga, Builds muscle strength, Perfects your posture, Prevents cartilage and joint breakdown, Protects your spine, Betters your bone health, Increases your blood flow, controls your blood pressure and diabetes, and many more” added Dr Adhikari.
KMC and Yenepoya Medical College will help in supervising the camps for senior citizen s under the tag line ‘yoga for freedom from diseases. The Keshava Smriti Samvardhana Samiti that manages Sanghaniketan, a community hall has given the hall free to the committee to conduct its activities. Yoga practitioners will occupy all the four floors of this hall on June 21 to show their yoga prowess.
Yoga will be taught to aspirants in seven batches during the week as follows: 6.30am-8am; 6pm-7.30pm (for senior citizens); 10am-11am; 4pm-6pm; 5.30pm-7pm; 10am-11.30am and 4.30pm-6pm. The focus will be on treating backaches, neck pain, knee pain, diabetes and blood pressure that people may have by giving them specific yoga tasks to deal with their condition.
MP Nalin Kumar Kateel will inaugurate the International Day of Yoga on June 21 at 6am at Saghanikethan. A stage programme will be held at 11am on that day. The camp is open to everyone. The district administration has provided full support for the event. Spot registrations are welcome at the venue.
An excellent way of life to keep healthy – particularly as you advance in age. This is an ancient system practiced and taught by YOGA GURUS for centuries. This is a way of life to keep healthy. I am glad that this fitness is now being widely sponsored in Mangalore.
I had the privilege of going through a course in Yoga some years ago with the blessings of Padma Bhushan Dr. B.M. Hegde when I took up the course at Bharatya Vidya Bhavan of which I am an executive committee member