Indian MP pushes compulsory yoga in schools focus 12/10/2010

Indian MP pushes compulsory yoga in schools

focus

12/10/2010

NEW DELHI — An MP in India is lobbying for a law that will make yoga compulsory in the country’s junior schools, where he says it will help with discipline, fitness and dealing with “computer-related stress.”

Satpal Maharaj, 59, from the ruling Congress party, said a recent trip to China had inspired him to push for the law, which would take yoga into India’s 217,000 junior schools where children begin their education at around five.

“We saw school children practicing Tai Chi Chuan (martial art) with great discipline in China and I thought, ‘We gave yoga to the world but we are ignoring it in India and we must bring it into our schools,’” Maharaj told AFP.

Yoga, which in the Sanskrit language means “union” or “integration,” involves the practice of numerous physical postures called asanas and is usually combined with long meditation sessions.

Indian scholars believe yoga dates back 5,000 years, based on archaeological evidence of poses found inscribed on stones and references to Yogic teachings in the ancient Hindu scriptures of knowledge, known as the Vedas.... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101210com7.html