Yoga camp attracts Kashmiri people

SRINAGAR - Out of curiosity or out of stress, hundreds of people have been visiting a yoga camp in Srinagar.

In the last few years, yoga’s popularity has taken off in the Kashmir Valley, thanks to a renewed fitness and health interest, particularly among the youth.

The four-day camp has been organized by a Delhi based organization, Morarji Desai Yoga institute. A group of instructors have been demonstrating yoga positions and also helping people to learn them.

The organisers have expressed happiness, as the response has been overwhelming.

“I have noticed that people are showing a lot of interest. We have been here for the past two days and thousands of people have come here. They have been watching and trying to practice it,” said Balmukh Singh, a yoga instructor.

“The concept of Yoga was not very popular in Kashmir. People do not know about it. We came to see what it actually is and how it works. Yoga deals with mental stress and also helps deal with psychological pressures. We wanted to see how it could help. The past 10 to 20 years have been stressful, we wanted to know how to cope with that and how to incorporate positive energies in our psyche,” says Atif Ahmed, a resident.

Yoga, the 5,000-year-old Indian discipline of exercise, diet and meditation involves a perfect blend of mental and physical exercises.

Studies show that yoga can reduce feelings of anxiety, stress and depression and also induce a feeling of well being in healthy people, and can reverse the clinical and biochemical changes associated with metabolic syndrome. By Parvez Butt (ANI)