Hindus are asking for a designated “Yoga Room” in the universities/colleges of USA.
Some US universities/colleges already offer an exclusive yoga studio—East Tennessee State University in Johnson City; Pitzer College in Claremont, California; W. Alton Jones Campus of The University of Rhode Island in West Greenwich; Santa Monica College in California. Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a Center of Yoga. Many universities/colleges offer yoga classes, including Harvard University; and many universities/colleges have yoga societies/clubs, reports suggest.
Calling launching of “Yoga Room” in nation’s universities/colleges a “step in the positive direction”, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, urged the universities/colleges to make all out efforts to incorporate yoga in the lives of the students. Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed pointed out.
Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.
According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to an estimate, about 21 million Americans, including many celebrities, now practice yoga. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Rajan Zed added.