Cuba celebrates International Yoga Day

Cuba will celebrate the first World Yoga Day next June 21, with two days of classes, workshops and lectures on the discipline, one of the ancient traditions India has bequeathed to humankind.

In exclusive statements to AIN News Agency, C. Rajasekhar, Ambassador of this nation in Cuba, announced the activities will take place on Saturday, June 20 and Sunday, June 21, at the Cuban capital city, and that they have been scheduled in coordination with the Cuban Association of Yoga, that this year arrives to its 25th anniversary.

Yoga is one of the most important legacies of our culture, and we are very proud that the United Nations Organization has appointed this day to celebrate it, at the request of First Minister of India, Rajendra Modi, with the support of more than 170 nations, as explained by the diplomat.

India and Cuba are, somehow, nations that think alike, and this practice has a strong philosophical basis to prevent health, therefore, it is not surprising that it has not been extended throughout Cuba, he added.

Eduardo Pimentel, who found in Yoga a physical and mental challenge, founded the Cuban Yoga Association in 1990, and cleared out that the festivities will not only take place in Havana, where there are hundreds of practitioners, but they will also extend to other provinces.

At present, we have subsidiaries in Matanzas, Cienfuegos, Sancti Spiritus, Camagüey, Holguín, Las Tunas and Santiago de Cuba, where there will be also practical classes and lectures taught by Cuban professors, trained during a 250 hours course, where 30 instructors have already graduated, he said.

In Havana, the venue will be the “Gerardo Abreu Fontán” Social Club, where a program of activities dealing, among other things, with the usual physiological, therapeutic and ethic aspects of Yoga become an effective solution against everyday stress, which will be held on June 20 and 21, from 9 am up to, approximately, 5pm.

We know that, among the regular pretexts not to practice this discipline we have the lack of time. But on June 21 we have Summer solstice, that is, the longest day of the year, we do not have even that pretext not to attend one of those sessions, he finished.

Source: AIN