Hindus welcome “Yoga Garden” in White House Easter Egg Roll event

Hindus have commended White House for including yoga in “138th White House Easter Egg Roll 2016” event to be held in the South Lawn of White House in Washington DC on March 28.

A “Yoga Garden” was listed under annual Easter Egg Roll “Events” on the White House website. “Come enjoy a session of yoga from professional instructors”, it said under the Yoga Garden.

Commending the White House gesture to include yoga in Easter Egg Roll events, the largest annual public event at the White House, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, said that although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, yoga was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all.

Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out that yoga, referred as “a living fossil, was a mental and physical discipline for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization. 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, Zed noted.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a recently released “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image. Yoga is the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Rajan Zed adds.

Besides “Yoga Garden”, this 11 hours 15 minutes event reportedly plans to include “Egg Roll Classics” (for Egg Hunt and Egg Roll), “Rock ‘n’ Egg Roll Stage” (for live music), “Storytime Stage”, “Hop To It!” (instructional dance party), “Obstacle Course”, “Basketball and Tennis” (hands-on training from pros on the President’s court), “Eggspress Yourself” (for arts and crafts), “Play with your Food”, “Eggsperiment Zone” (interactive activities designed to spark scientific curiosity), Fun Run and various costumed characters.

Over 35,000 people from all over USA are expected to participate in this event, whose theme is “Let’s Celebrate!”. The Easter Egg Roll is a White House tradition dating back to 1878 and President Rutherford B. Hayes, but there are records of informal egg rolling events as early as Abraham Lincoln’s administration.

Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ, is the greatest and oldest feast of the Christianity.