United Nations (EFE).- The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, led this Wednesday in New York the celebrations of the International Day of Yoga, which brought together thousands of people to practice the ancient discipline at the UN headquarters and in emblematic points of the city like Times Square.
Modi, who is in the United States on an official visit, joined the crowd gathered in the gardens of the United Nations complex for a morning yoga session and, minutes before, defended the benefits of this practice in a speech.
“When we do yoga we feel good physically, mentally calm and emotionally satisfied. It’s not just working out on a mat, it’s a whole way of life,” she said.
Modi insisted that, “in a divided world”, he can foster unity and improve the health of the planet, a message similar to that published by the UN Secretary General, António Guterres.
Celebration in the world for yoga
The Indian head of government, dressed in exercise clothes, participated as one of the others in the yoga session organized at the United Nations headquarters, an organization that in 2014 decreed June 21 as the International Day of this practice, coinciding with the solstice of summer.
On this date, thousands of people around the world take the opportunity to show their passion in massive events, which today included a gathering of some 153,000 people in the western Indian state of Gujarat, which broke a Guinness record.
In New York, several thousand were to congregate throughout the day and in different shifts in the bustling Times Square, where seven classes were scheduled throughout the day for which at least 8,000 interested parties had registered.
Already early in the morning, several hundred people, boxed in between the imposing illuminated advertisements in the central square -which today had been delimited with metal fences- followed the instructions of the “yogi” Douglass Stewart, who will be replaced in subsequent shifts. by other teachers.
The discipline of yoga, which has its origins in the ancient “vedas” (word meaning “wisdom”), the Hindu scriptures dating back to 1,500 BC and forming the basis of the Hindu religion, has had a new awakening in the India with the impulse of the Modi nationalist government.
After his visit to New York, the Indian Prime Minister plans to travel to Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden.