Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing an event marking the seventh International Yoga Day on Monday morning, said, “Today, when the whole world is combating the coronavirus disease pandemic, yoga remains a ray of hope.
"When Covid emerged, no country was prepared. At this time Yoga became a source of inner strength. Yoga helps in self-discipline, it inculcated faith in people that they could fight this virus. Frontline warriors told me that they made yoga a tool in fighting the virus," PM Modi said.
The Prime Minister also launched a mYoga app that will be available worldwide. “In collaboration with WHO, India has taken another important step. We will be launching the mYoga app which will have yoga training videos in different languages for people across the world. This will help us achieve our ‘One World, One Health’ motto,” he added.
This year, the theme is ‘Yoga For Wellness’. Elaborating on it, PM Modi wrote on Twitter: “The theme this year is ‘Yoga For Wellness’, which focuses on practising Yoga for physical and mental wellbeing.”
This will help us in making the 'One World, One Health' motto successful, he said.
"At a time when the whole world is fighting the coronavirus pandemic, yoga remains a ray of hope," Modi said.
The prime minister noted that there may not have been any major public events in countries around the world and in India for around a year and a half, but the enthusiasm for Yoga Day has not diminished.
For most of the countries of the world, Yoga Day is not their age-old cultural festival and in this difficult time, people could have forgotten about it and ignored it, but on the contrary, people's enthusiasm for yoga has increased, he said.
"When the unseen coronavirus knocked on the doors of the world, no country was prepared for it in terms of resources, capability and mental state. We all have seen that in such difficult times, yoga has become a great source of inner strength," he said.
Yoga shows us the way from stress to strength and from negativity to creativity, he asserted.
Modi noted that the medical science focuses as much on "healing" as on treatment, and said yoga plays a role in healing.
Many schools now begin their online classes with yogic exercises like pranayam, he said, adding that this prepares children physically to deal with Covid.
The prime minister expressed confidence that yoga will continue playing its preventive, as well as promotive role in healthcare of masses.
With PTI inputs
