Hindus have welcomed Women and Gender Studies Center at large public research institution George Mason University (GMU) on launching “Community Yoga for Activists” program, which terms it an “inclusive yoga practice centered around community and social justice”.
Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called usage of multi-faceted yoga in the area of community and social justice as a “step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all US and Canada universities to launch yoga programs.
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, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.
Rajan Zed 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 a recently released “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.
GMU in Fairfax, Virginia, with four campuses in Virginia and one in South Korea and launched in 1957; has 34,000 students from all 50 states and 130 countries, 12 schools/colleges and spent about $105 million in research last year. “Mason is committed to creating a more just, free and prosperous world”, its website states. Angel Cabrera is GMU President; while Professor Angela J. Hattery serves as the Director of its Women & Gender Studies Center, which offers graduate programs.