Indian MP pushes compulsory yoga in schools
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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.
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20101210com7.html
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