Fiji’s education minister Dr Mahendra Reddy has announced that yoga will be part of the primary and secondary school curriculum from this year.
“It is a beginning of a new era in education, an era that we are trying to develop to contribute towards character building, towards securing a physically and mentally stable fitter Fiji.”
Is Yoga a religious practice?
Given its close connection to Indian Vedic tradition some people think yoga by nature is a specifically religious practice.
Deepak Chopra says that “If by we mean the religious experience of transcendence, the loss of fear of death, and the emergence of platonic qualities such as truth, beauty, goodness, harmony, and evolution, then yes, yoga can give us a religious experience.”
“It is not religion in the form of ideology, dogma, belief systems, or compliance; it’s a spiritual experience that gives us access to a universal domain of reality.”
Rights of individuals protected
”Fiji’s president, Jioji Konrote has stressed that the rights of individuals as enshrined under the Constitution must always be taken into consideration when contemplating yoga so that there are no other repercussions.
Reddy says it won’t be compulsory, “but we as educators would want to provide a bundle of choice, a bundle of opportunity to our children,”
He said the Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts have taken on the enterprise to implement this program in schools around the country via the physical education programme.
Reddy said the practice of yoga would develop the students’ physical and mental health.
Indian High Commissioner to Fiji, Vishvas Sapkal believes the introduction of yoga in schools around the country will boost students’ physical, mental and spiritual discipline.
He said this while officiating at the International Day of Yoga celebrations in Labasa last week.
Sapkal said yoga embodied the unity of mind and body; thought and action; restraint and fulfilment; and harmony between man and nature.
“Yoga, which originated in India more than 6000 years ago, is a combination of physical, mental and spiritual discipline with which one can transform the body and the mind,” he said.
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