Honoring the Roots, Celebrating The Blossoms On International Day Of Yoga

The Indian ambassador to the United Nations joined a room full of journalists this week to talk up the first International Day of Yoga taking place on June 21. Ambassador Asoke Kumar Mukerji laid out some of the plans for the day in New York City, which includes a yoga teaching at the UN Plaza followed by a much larger event in Times Square that 20,000 people are expected to attend. In all, Mukerji boasted that up to 2 billion people in 192 countries around the world would be participating in the United Nations-sponsored event. While it is clear that yoga is wildly popular in almost every corner of the world, much less understood are the origins of yoga, including the religious and cultural context out of which it grew. Changing that appears to be part of the aim of the International Day of Yoga -- and it is not without controversy. The idea for the UN-sponsored day was first proposed during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to the General Assembly in September 2014, during which he laid out the personal, societal and even global benefits of yoga. The UN adopted the resolution proposed by the Indian mission just a few months later, with 177 countries sponsoring. The International Day of Yoga is being touted by India as a day to recognize the benefits of yoga in promoting harmony, fostering good health and even helping the planet in the face of climate change. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who is the founder of the Art of Living and is leading the yoga session at the United Nations, listed the benefits of yoga as a confusion-free mind, an inhibition-free intellect, a sorrow-free soul and a harmonious environment. Unfortunately, the conversations around the International Day of Yoga are not entirely harmonious, and this is most evident in the very country that led the charge to create the International Day of Yoga in the first place. While Indian embassies are preparing events around the world, the reception of International Day of Yoga back in India has been marred by underlying tensions. Even as organizers in Delhi prepare to break a world record with 45,000 people practicing yoga together, there have been religious objections raised by Muslims and other religious minorities who worry that the prescribed practice might conflict with their spiritual tradition. They also question the political motive of the day, given the prime minister's affiliation with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. At the center of the controversy is the identity of yoga itself. The question of who "owns" yoga has gained traction in recent years. In the United States, the Hindu America Foundation started a Take Back Yoga campaign. Shripad Yesso Naik, India's yoga minister, told The Washington Post, "There is little doubt about yoga being an Indian art form. We're trying to establish to the world that it's ours." Shankar stressed the importance of understanding the origins of yoga and its important texts, such as the Patanjali Yoga Sutras. He also worries about "inauthentic" yoga and informed me that the Indian government is considering starting a certification program and standardizing the requirements to be a yoga teacher. However, according to Andrea Jain, assistant professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University, these efforts may not be recognizing how diverse yoga has been from its very beginnings. "From a historical perspective, yoga has always been variable," she told me. "There is no one original tradition." Jain explains that the history of yoga is diverse, and the yoga that the world currently practices is a very recent phenomenon. Before that, there were many different kinds of yogic traditions practiced by Hindus as well as Buddhists, Sufis and Jains. Yoga included devotional practices such as Bhakti, as well as a rigorous, physical yoga practiced by ascetics whose goal was not to enhance the body but to control the body and its desires, and to focus on higher goals such as connection with God or understanding the true self. Jain, whose most recent book is called Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture, explained that there were very few asanas or poses in pre-20th-century yoga compared with today. Modern postural yoga came about from the encounter between yogis from India with the European and North American fitness culture that emphasized exercise and bodybuilding. "Yoga gurus borrowed a lot of the conceptions of the body and body practices from modern physical culture and associated it with yoga. They constructed theses sequences of postures that had more in common with modern physical culture like gymnastics than anything with the pre-modern yoga tradition." Late in the 20th century, these yogis became entrepreneurs, according to Jain, and constructed yoga "brands." Yoga became identified with modern postural yoga and marketed by these teachers as part of an overall approach to well-being. These teachers, and their students, then took yoga to every corner of the earth. This focus on the physical aspect of yoga is evident in how it is practiced around the world. Although Modi explicitly said that yoga is "not about exercise" in his address to the UN, there are many people in studios around the world where it is promoted primarily as a physical fitness and well-being program. According to Kosuke Takahashi, editor-in-chief of HuffPost Japan, people in Japan are not so interested in the spiritual or cultural origins of yoga, but in its physical benefits, including detoxing the body and increasing metabolism. Most practitioners in Japan use yoga primarily for weight control, relaxation and beauty care. But just because people begin by approaching yoga as exercise, doesn't mean it doesn't have a power that can surprise the practitioner. HuffPost Korea's trend editor, Hyunji Nam, insists that she is someone who really hated to exercise but started doing yoga a year ago while struggling with the editor curse of back, neck and wrist pain. After a very short time of doing yoga, her body began to heal and she was surprised as time went on by the other benefits of the practice: "I began to think about the people around me and the things I experienced for at least one hour a day," she wrote me. "I think a spiritual aspect of yoga made me healthier." Katerina Nanopoulou, an editor at HuffPost Greece, introduced me to a Greek yoga instructor named Philippos Stavrinidis, who sees Hyunji's experience play out a lot in his students and feels that is a very good thing. "Introducing someone to a yoga workout is a good first step. However, one should know that yoga is a philosophical system whose benefits extend far beyond a physical workout," Stavrinidis said. "Yoga also includes breathing exercises, meditation and a series of social norms. It adopts a holistic approach towards the person, aiming to bring balance in one's physical, mental and emotional state. I am of the opinion that growing awareness of yoga, even as a trendy style of workout initially, will at the end attract more people to get involved into the whole philosophy of yoga." Stavrinidis seems to sum up the fundamental goals of the International Day of Yoga, which, in the final version passed by the UN General Assembly, does not insist on understanding origins or prescribing a certain kind of practice, but recognizes the proven benefits of yoga in attaining personal, societal and global well-being. It is worthwhile remembering what the actual United Nations International Day of Yoga resolution says: Recognizing that yoga provides a holistic approach to health and well-being, Recognizing also that wider dissemination of information about the benefits of practising yoga would be beneficial for the health of the world population, Decides to proclaim 21 June the International Day of Yoga. While some may do yoga mostly for the exercise, like any practice, the more you do it, the deeper you go. Curiosity is often the most valuable trait for the spiritual person, and anyone who feels that yoga has benefited him or her physically would do well to delve into the rich history of this ancient spiritual practice. It is important to honor the roots of yoga, as contested as they are. It is equally crucial to celebrate the blossoms that are blooming in ways that would have surprised those practitioners in the past. For thousands of years, yoga grew in the rich and diverse soil of spirituality within South Asia -- in the 21st century, yoga's vitality continues to be revealed in its ability to transform lives from South America to Iceland, from atheists to Zoroastrians. When I asked Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu America Foundation, what she hoped people might understand about yoga, she wrote: Yoga has the potential to transform both our inner and outer selves in a way that would allow us to see past differences of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and any other artificial identities we may create, to be able to recognize the presence of the divine in one another and all of existence. With the ease of travel and the Internet, the world has grown rapidly smaller. Spiritual traditions will be shared and may be transformed in surprising ways. Yoga as a global phenomenon is still very young, and it will be exciting to see what celebrations of International Day of Yoga around the world look like in years to come. HuffPost International Editions contributed to the reporting of this piece. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Yoga is ‘incompatible’ with Christian faith, Church says

The Holy Synod, the Greek Orthodox Church’s governing body, on Tuesday denounced yoga, saying it is “incompatible” with the Christian faith.

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Silicon Valley's 'posture guru' might have figured out how to solve back pain

Chronic back pain is both bad and common enough that it has been described as a modern epidemic. Musculoskeletal issues — mostly, back pain — are the leading cause of new and existing long-term disability claims, according to an analysis by the Council for Disability Awareness. Even those of us without chronic pain may feel stiff and sore after a day hunched over a computer. Yet surely, even though the human body has a number of notable design flaws (I'm looking at you, knees), there's no way we've evolved to have our spines, the primary support system for our bodies, fail out on us on a regular basis? Our spines aren't the problem, according to Esther Gokhale, an acupuncturist who started researching back pain after experiencing an excruciating amount of it herself. The problem is our posture. Gokhale, who the New York Times has referred to as the "posture guru" of Silicon Valley, says that by reintroducing the concept of "primal posture," standing like babies or theoretically, like our ancestors, we can fix posture and back pain at the same time. She says we've forgotten how to stand. As NPR reports, Gokhale started by looking at indigenous groups around the world, where she says the back pain of the sort that's so common in modern society is nonexistent. She studied the works of anthropologists who examined posture like Noelle Perez-Christiaens and looked at physiotherapy approaches like the Alexander Technique — multiple physiotherapy organizations say that posture is the key to a healthy spine. And Gokhale traveled around the world to see what people look like when they stand. The first thing that stood out to her were the shapes of people's spines in these small villages of Brazil, West Africa, Portugal, India, and other places. "They have this regal posture, and it's very compelling." We tend to think that a spine with an "S-shaped" curve is normal, but Gokhale says we should try for more of a "J-curved" spine, as seen in the second image on the right (or above, on mobile). "The J-shaped spine is what you see in Greek statues. It's what you see in young children. It's good design," she told NPR. But Gokhale thinks we can fix our posture by focusing on the way we stand and sit, and by doing so, "reposition and reshape your shoulders, arms, neck, torso, pelvis, hips, legs, and feet the way they were designed to be." She's got a series of exercises that she recommends on her website to help people fix their posture (and also offers both free and paid classes and has written a book about back pain). As the NPR story about Gokhale points out, this idea that people have forgotten how to stand and have developed bad posture and back pain as a result isn't a scientifically confirmed fact. But there are elements of our lifestyle that contribute to bad posture, and many experts would say that fixing those could help solve back pain. One neurosurgeon told NPR that a large part of the posture difference between the indigenous groups that Gokhale looked at and modern Americans may have to do with obesity rates. Carrying extra body fat and having weaker abdominal muscles is likely to pull your back forward — causing that slump and potentially, back pain too. Fixing that, largely by developing stronger abdominal and core muscles, should help fix people's posture, and eliminate back pain along the way. If Gokhale's exercises help people build up their core muscles in the back and abdomen, it makes sense that they would help.SEE ALSO: Science has found the best strategy for improving your sleep Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 3 goats went airborne in China as part of an elaborate stunt with a giant kite

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Celebs are going crazy for this new health treatment that sounds like torture, and scientists say it’s probably bogus

Thousands of people, including world-class athlete LeBron James and actress Demi Moore, are stripping down for a new kind of quick-and-easy spa experience called whole-body cryotherapy (WBC). The procedure involves standing nearly naked in a chamber filled with super-chilled air — we're talking anywhere from minus 150 to minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit — for three minutes. Its purported benefits include everything from relieving pain and mitigating depression to improving athletic performance and getting better sleep. Our experience Business Insider was so intrigued by the reportedly miraculous benefits of WBC that we sent a few of our reporters to the only center in New York City offering the treatment, KryoLife. There, reporter Graham Flanagan stood in nothing but some clogs, socks, gloves, and his boxers — necessary clothing items to protect certain extremities from potential frostbite — inside of a chamber filled with the super-chilled air. KryoLife assured us that, despite the extreme cold that would be brushing up against his bare skin, the procedure was completely painless. Sure enough, Flanagan emerged from the chamber completely unharmed, though noticably more energetic and giddy, saying he felt a high similar to the one felt after riding a roller coaster. That's the release of endorphins — hormones linked to the euphoria some people experience after intense exercise — kicking in, KryoLife CEO Joanna Fryben said.  "I felt the urge to run, lift weights, or play a sport like tennis or basketball," Flanagan said. The effects lasted about an hour, and by the end of the day, Flanagan felt the same as before the treatment. He didn't notice any difference in sleep that night or feel stronger during his weekly exercise routines. Everyone is unique Fryben says each of KryoLife's more than 1,000 clients experiences a slightly different effect from the treatment. Some people come out feeling energized, while others feel relaxed, she said. Similarly, some can tolerate the chamber's chilly temperatures, while others can't wait to get out. Another Business Insider reporter who tried the treatment, Sam Rega, said he felt so relaxed after completing his first session that he went home and promptly fell asleep — a very different outcome from Flanagan's. The procedure has been popular in European countries including Poland, Finland, and the UK since as far back as the '70s. It was only recently introduced in the US, in 2006. Why each person experiences something different is unclear, Fryben says. Customers seem to experience more benefits that last longer the more treatments they complete, Fryben says. In other words, she says, one three-minute session probably isn't going to do much. Freeze and repeat Giovanni Lombardi, a biomedical researcher at the Galeazzi Orthopedic Institute in Italy who has conducted a number of studies on WBC, told Business Insider in an email that to see some of the treatment's alleged rewards over longer periods of time, say weeks or even months, a person needed to do it regularly. "The best way to keep the benefits is to repeat the cycles," Lombardi said. This shouldn't be a surprise because it's no different from other types of spa treatments, such as the relaxing effects of a massage or the relief from acupuncture. WBC, however, can be expensive — from $70 to $90 a session.   "In our experience, 15 consecutive sessions over one to three weeks are the best," he said. The long-term purported effects, such as better sleep and pain relief, from that many treatments, Lombardi said, could last up to six months. Lombardi added that the number of cycles a subject should complete highly depended on which benefits the subject is looking for, as there are so many different purported effects. The New York Knicks, for example, use the therapy to accelerate postgame recovery. They have even purchased a couple of the chambers, which they keep at their base. On the other hand, celebrities like Demi Moore reportedly use the treatment to keep their skin looking smooth and young, another alleged benefit of WBC.  So, is it worth your money? Cryotherapy versus plain old ice The word cryotherapy is derived from the Greek words "cryo" meaning cold and "therapia" meaning healing, and it refers to any procedure that uses low temperatures to treat bodily ailments such as inflammation or skin lesions. Putting an ice pack on a sore muscle is one common example. Whole-body cryotherapy is different because it exposes the entire body to extreme cold — colder than the coldest natural temperatures ever recorded on earth.  Under these incredibly chilly conditions — temperatures about 100 degrees colder than an ice bath — your body begins redirecting blood flow to your core — where your major organs are located — to prevent you from freezing to death.  At the same time, the blood vessels in your arms and legs constrict, reducing blood flow to those muscles and alleviating inflammation and the pain that goes with it in the process. It's this reduced inflammation that some research suggests could lead to some of cryotherapy's alleged benefits, like reduced swelling and pain. Some of the other effects people cite, however, such as smoother skin, mitigated depression, and better sleep, have yet to be deeply explored with scientific research. Science vs. stories While there is a growing body of scientific research exploring whole-body cryotherapy, most of the research looks at its impact on athletic performance and use as an alternative method for pain relief. The other supposed benefits, like boosted metabolism, better sleep, and smoother skin lack substantial research to either prove of disprove the claims.  The obvious potential benefit of WBC is that it can reduce inflammation throughout the entire body. "This is the key anti-inflammatory action of WBC making it theoretically effective in the treatment of all the inflammatory conditions," said Lombardi. Some of these conditions include exercise-induced soreness and pain from diseases like arthritis and Fibromyalgia. Then again, you can get the same whole-body cold treatment from an ice bath. And it's not clear whether WBC is better for athletes or sufferers of inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis than just your basic ice treatment. A 2006 study, for example, found subjects with rheumatoid arthritis felt more relief from pain after a week of 2-3 WBC sessions each day than subjects who received other types of cryotherapy treatment, like ice packs applied locally, but ultimately "there were no significant differences in the disease activity between the groups," they write in their paper. In addition, none of the cryotherapy chambers sold in the US are FDA certified — all the companies that distribute the chambers, including KyroLife are required to display a disclaimer saying so — which means the procedure can't yet be legally marketed as a "treatment" for any diseases caused by inflammation. An unproven therapy?  While reducing inflammation might be good for reducing pain, it likely won't improve athletic performance, Joseph Costello, a senior research associate at the University of Portsmouth in England, told The New York Times. For that, athletes would need a procedure that stimulates muscle recovery, writes Costello. In a small 2012 study, Costello and two other researchers at the University of Limerick studied WBC's effect on muscle recovery by having thirty-six individuals do intense leg resistance exercises. Twenty-four hours after the exercises, half of them did two 3-minute WBC treatments while the other half were exposed to air that was just slightly cooler than room temperature. They then measured each group's muscles 24, 48, and 72 hours later. Their conclusion: WBC was "ineffective in alleviating muscle soreness or enhancing muscle force recovery," they wrote in the paper. On the other hand, a 2014 study found that WBC did, in fact, appear to reduce muscle damage in a group of young, active, college-aged men after they completed a series of exercises including bench presses, bicep curls, and squats. Out of a group of 18, half of the men had two WBC sessions each day for five days after the exercises while the other half had no treatment-related sessions during those five days. The group who received the freeze treatment exhibited reduced muscle damage and inflammation. Like many studies investigating the effects of WBC in sports medicine, these two studies had only a small number of volunteers and used only a short number of completed WBC cycles. Therefore, it's hard to make any resounding conclusions about the procedure's purported health benefits regarding athletic performance. Without a lot of research to back it up, some researchers say they are more than skeptical of the treatment:  "'Skeptical' is an understatement," Ian Harris, a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Whitlam Orthopedic Research Center in Australia who has studied the effects of cryotherapy following knee replacement, told Business Insider in an email. "My official position is that unless they can show a clear reproducible benefit from properly blinded randomized controlled trials then they are peddling unproven therapies for profit." SEE MORE: I sequenced my DNA at a community lab in Brooklyn — and what I learned surprised me CHECK OUT: Big, beautiful photos of the giant flying saucer NASA is using to send humans to Mars Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: We tried cryotherapy — the super-cold treatment LeBron James swears by

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Healthy Bodies for a Sick World...

"Physical culture is in the air just now," reflected P. G. Wodehouse in an article for Vanity Fair published a year before the "gentleman's gentleman" entered the literary canon. The essay described how the "average man" of post-Edwardian England "now postpones his onslaught on the boiled egg for a matter of fifteen minutes," time devoted to a "series of bendings and stretchings which in the course of time are guaranteed to turn him into a demi-god." A century later and physical culture once again pervades. Earlier this week, a colleague in London penned an article highlighting the growth in female sports as symbolic of a wider trend towards health and fitness in the U.K. The U.S. is similarly bending and stretching under the spell, with traditional gyms augmented by boutique fitness centers and juice shops in the country's great metropolises. My colleague cited figures on the mushrooming market for women's sporting clothes to emphasize the refocus towards personal wellbeing, while noting the community aspect of modern fitness fueled by the carbs of "celebrity and media." She is certainly right on the community aspect, with a strong argument that gatherings around fitness have superseded the church and synagogue -- brick victims of secularism's powerful strides. As such, health could simply be the latest expression of the human need to experience transcendental emotion beyond the individual. The fitness center is, after all, the modern incarnation of a religious cult, one that leans back beyond Wodehouse, even beyond the "muscular Christianity" of the Victorians and into antiquity with the Romans and ancient Greeks using exercise as a preparation for war. Yet the current flowering may have more immediate psychological drivers too. Wodehouse wrote about the push towards "physical culture" in 1914, a year bandaged by the tumult of war wrought on both citizenry and soldiery. Likewise, the 2008 financial crash (and its economic and political aftermath) blanketed the hitherto comfortable West in doubt, insecurity and a profound sense of unease. Whereas Europe and America's portly middle classes once relied on a career delivering sufficient recompense to raise a family, buy a house, enjoy vacations, and save for a comfortable retirement, the 2008 meltdown broke the illusion. Banks crumbled, interest rates plummeted, employment fell and wages stagnated. Meanwhile, restrictions on lending created a generation for whom homeownership -- the most basic emblem of long-term security -- was denied. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State abroad was paralleled by anti-immigrant sentiment at home, the rats of the far-right resurfacing from the pipes and sewers to once again spread the bacilli of intolerance and hate. For a generation, the system's upheaval highlighted a lack of control in the world, a psychological blow that led many to turn inwards, attempting to regain control via dominance over their own bodies. In a society unrestrained and a future unknown, perhaps exercise regimes, healthy eating and mindfulness offered a return to the illusion or at least a way to cope with the stress therein. Writing the year the Great War was unleashed, Wodehouse scoffed at how "the advertisement pages of the magazines are congested with portraits of stern-looking, semi-nude individuals with bulging muscles and fifty-inch chests." The author lived to be 93, having practiced his own daily exercise regime for more than 50 years. Were he alive today, he may well have noted the plates of healthy food, yoga poses and shirtless pull-ups similarly congesting Instagram. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Healthy Bodies for a Sick World...

"Physical culture is in the air just now," reflected P. G. Wodehouse in an article for Vanity Fair published a year before the "gentleman's gentleman" entered the literary canon. The essay described how the "average man" of post-Edwardian England "now postpones his onslaught on the boiled egg for a matter of fifteen minutes," time devoted to a "series of bendings and stretchings which in the course of time are guaranteed to turn him into a demi-god." A century later and physical culture once again pervades. Earlier this week, a colleague in London penned an article highlighting the growth in female sports as symbolic of a wider trend towards health and fitness in the U.K. The U.S. is similarly bending and stretching under the spell, with traditional gyms augmented by boutique fitness centers and juice shops in the country's great metropolises. My colleague cited figures on the mushrooming market for women's sporting clothes to emphasize the refocus towards personal wellbeing, while noting the community aspect of modern fitness fueled by the carbs of "celebrity and media." She is certainly right on the community aspect, with a strong argument that gatherings around fitness have superseded the church and synagogue -- brick victims of secularism's powerful strides. As such, health could simply be the latest expression of the human need to experience transcendental emotion beyond the individual. The fitness center is, after all, the modern incarnation of a religious cult, one that leans back beyond Wodehouse, even beyond the "muscular Christianity" of the Victorians and into antiquity with the Romans and ancient Greeks using exercise as a preparation for war. Yet the current flowering may have more immediate psychological drivers too. Wodehouse wrote about the push towards "physical culture" in 1914, a year bandaged by the tumult of war wrought on both citizenry and soldiery. Likewise, the 2008 financial crash (and its economic and political aftermath) blanketed the hitherto comfortable West in doubt, insecurity and a profound sense of unease. Whereas Europe and America's portly middle classes once relied on a career delivering sufficient recompense to raise a family, buy a house, enjoy vacations, and save for a comfortable retirement, the 2008 meltdown broke the illusion. Banks crumbled, interest rates plummeted, employment fell and wages stagnated. Meanwhile, restrictions on lending created a generation for whom homeownership -- the most basic emblem of long-term security -- was denied. Meanwhile, the rise of the Islamic State abroad was paralleled by anti-immigrant sentiment at home, the rats of the far-right resurfacing from the pipes and sewers to once again spread the bacilli of intolerance and hate. For a generation, the system's upheaval highlighted a lack of control in the world, a psychological blow that led many to turn inwards, attempting to regain control via dominance over their own bodies. In a society unrestrained and a future unknown, perhaps exercise regimes, healthy eating and mindfulness offered a return to the illusion or at least a way to cope with the stress therein. Writing the year the Great War was unleashed, Wodehouse scoffed at how "the advertisement pages of the magazines are congested with portraits of stern-looking, semi-nude individuals with bulging muscles and fifty-inch chests." The author lived to be 93, having practiced his own daily exercise regime for more than 50 years. Were he alive today, he may well have noted the plates of healthy food, yoga poses and shirtless pull-ups similarly congesting Instagram. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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