4 min readNew DelhiJun 21, 2024 10:18 AM IST
First published on: Jun 21, 2024 at 09:34 AM IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is leading the tenth annual International Yoga Day celebrations in Srinagar on June 21. The Prime Minister has taken the lead in extolling the advantages and benefits of yoga, and lent the weight of his office to the popularisation of its practice. Although yoga has long been recognised as India’s great gift to the global culture of wellness, the official recognition by the United Nations came after a push by Modi in 2014.
United Nations recognition
The international community observes June 21 as International Yoga Day. A theme for this day is announced every year — this year’s theme is “Yoga for Self and Society”. Last year, the theme was “Yoga for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam — One Earth One Family”, and Prime Minister Modi led the celebrations at the North Lawn of the UN Headquarters in New York City.
The UN passed a resolution on December 11, 2014 during the 69th session of the General Assembly to proclaim June 21 as International Day of Yoga. Speaking at the session, Modi had said, “Yoga is an invaluable gift from our ancient tradition. Yoga embodies unity of mind and body, thought and action … a holistic approach [that] is valuable to our health and our well-being. Yoga is not just about exercise; it is a way to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and the nature.”
The first Yoga Day celebrations held in 2015 at Raj Path in New Delhi. Modi, along with other dignitaries, created two Guinness World Records — for being the world’s largest yoga session (35,985 people), and for having the largest number of participating nationalities (84).
Ancient philosophy of well being
“Yoga is an ancient physical, mental and spiritual practice that originated in India. The word ‘yoga’ derives from the Sanskrit and means to join or to unite, symbolizing the union of body and consciousness,” the United Nations website says.
While the word is most commonly associated these days with anaerobic physical exercise and techniques of stretching and breathing that have recognised health benefits, in its broad sense, it can be translated as spiritual discipline or application. Its philosophical roots lie in the Six Doctrines of Salvation in Hinduism, in which Yoga forms a related and complementary pair with Sankhya, the other two pairs being Nyaya and Vaishesika, and Mimosa and Vedanta. (AL Basham, ‘The Wonder That Was India’)
Yoga encapsulates a broad set of religious practices and acts of self-mortification, the practitioner of which is called a Yogi. An early school of yogic philosophy emphasised psychic training as a means of salvation, drawing from the Yoga Sutras of the grammarian Patanjali. In the medieval period, the techniques of yoga were employed by various tantric schools who made the exercises increasingly difficult, and the practice attained a certain exclusivity.
Yoga for health and wellness
Yoga is today a popular and accessible philosophy of physical and mental well-being that is practised by millions around the world. According to its famous practitioner BKS Iyengar, “Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one’s actions.”
In its ‘Common Yoga Protocol’ from 2019, the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) lists Yama, Niyama, Āsana, Prāṇāyāma, Pratyāhāra, Dhāraṇā, Dhyāna, Samādhi, Bandhās and Mudrās, Ṣaṭkarmas,Yuktāhāra, Mantra-japa,Yukta-karma as popular yoga ‘sadhanas’.
The AYUSH protocol describes the folding hands logo of Yoga Day as reflecting “the union of individual consciousness with that of universal consciousness, a perfect harmony between mind and body, man and nature, the holistic approach to health and well being. The brown leaves in the logo symbolize the earth element, the green leaves of nature, blue the fire element while the sun symbolises the source of energy and inspiration.”
This is a revised and updated version of explainers that were published earlier in 2020 and 2021.
The UN passed a resolution on December 11, 2014 during the 69th session of the General Assembly to proclaim June 21 as International Day of Yoga. (Express photo by Kamleshwar Singh) 
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