Hindus laud Lutheran Church for offering free yoga instruction

Nevada (US), Sep 26 (ANI): Hindus have welcomed Norman (Oklahoma, USA) church for sponsoring a market which will offer free yoga instruction.

According to reports, University Lutheran Church and Student Center in Norman is sponsoring a Really Really Free Market on October nine where no money is exchanged and everything is free and which the Church describes as: "This is a way of reaching out and giving back to the Norman community". Besides other items/services, it will offer free yoga instruction and will feature belly dancing.

Welcoming the Church offer of free yoga instruction, eminent Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, yoga was a world heritage to be utilized by all. One could still practice one's respective faith and do yoga. Yoga would rather help one in achieving one's spiritual goals in whatever religion one believed in.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, referred as "a living fossil" whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, was a mental and physical discipline handed down from one guru to next, for everybody to share and benefit from. 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. Yoga was based on an eightfold path to direct the practitioner from awareness of the external world to a focus on the inner, Zed added.

According to National Institutes of Health, Yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. Swami Vivekananda reportedly brought yoga to USA in 1893. According to an estimate, about 16 million Americans now do yoga.

Launched in 1955 and moved to current site in 1965, University Lutheran Church and Student Center in Norman is affiliated to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with Mike Girlinghouse as Pastor. Part of its mission is to spread the "message of God's abundant grace". Norman, home to University of Oklahoma and incorporated in 1891, is also known as City of Festivals. (ANI)