International Yoga Day - Celebrating Oneness!

Hectic schedules, fast food and sedentary lifestyles are affecting people's health. With new technologies, gadgets and apps overtaking our lives, the only movement is restricted to our eyes and hands. The situation has reached a dire stage. Today, 61% of all deaths in India are due to lifestyle diseases. In this context, it is heartening to note that yoga's holistic healing benefits are being understood and embraced the world over, and its growing popularity has culminated into the International Yoga Day.

But without a minimal understanding of yoga, it is difficult to appreciate the significance of the resolution to celebrate an International Yoga Day. The ancient sages of India had developed an integral system called yoga to keep the physical and mental faculties fit and healthy and to slow down the inevitable decay of the body organs. Yogic practices are complete in its revamping of the entire system – the physical body, the mental body and the energy body. Like every scientific theory; yoga also offers a very practical and systematically designed technique. The system of yoga maintains that every matter in this cosmos, from the most prevalent to the most subtle, is vibrant with life. Modern science agrees with it in that even inside the tiniest particle of atom, there is incredible movement. If there is movement, it is being caused by some energy and that energy, yoga stresses, is the basis of all life. According to yoga, each and every matter is throbbing with life energy – that energy is consciousness itself and that consciousness is just a part of the Super Consciousness or God Reality.

Today, it is estimated that close to 200 million people around the world practice yoga of some form or the other, a majority of them in India, and over 20 million of them in the United States alone. With this resolution for an International Yoga Day, more people will become aware of the tenets of yoga and will be encouraged to follow a yogic life style, a life that is healthy, humble and devout. Let this be a great opening for the world community to realise the worth of oneness and then, there is no feud, no disagreement and no disparity. Man of every creed and colour will live as one – the world will become one. Delhi Airport is a strident supporter of yoga and wishes everyone a happy yoga day.