Yoga road trip to document yoga in US

The six-month tour, reaching more than 20 cities across North America, aims to spotlight yoga's transformative  power and rapidly growing popularity
The six-month tour, reaching more than 20 cities across North America, aims to spotlight yoga’s transformative power and rapidly growing popularity

CHICAGO: Chicago Yoga Journal, in partnership with Gaia, is hosting the “Live Be Yoga Tour”-a six-month cross-country tour documenting yoga in America.

It stops at yoga studios, festivals, farms, prisons, healthcare facilities, and events in over 20 major cities and small towns in search of standout yoga teachers and fellow passionate yogis and to share how yoga positively transforms lives.

Stops include Austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Boulder, Estes Park, etc.

The UN’s International Day of Yoga -The Yoga Day Summit this month will present an unparalleled opportunity to experience and celebrate the beauty, power and depth of yoga as a vehicle for living a divine life and creating a world built on oneness.

On the second International Yoga Day, inspiring teachers – including H.H. Swami Chidanand Saraswati, Seane Corn, Pujya Mooji, Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, Shiva Rea, Michael A. Singer, Janet Stone, Ana Forrest, Tommy Rosen, Kia Miller and others – will share their knowledge on a vast array of fascinating subjects that can empower one to take one’s practice to the next level .

The Yoga Day Summit is a FREE full day online event, filmed in large part at Parmarth Niketan that will explore the world of yoga from its ancient roots in India to today’s global movement of transformation.

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. Launched in 1975, Yoga Journal claims to be “the world’s largest and most influential yoga brand”.

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. Rajan Zed president of Universal Society of Hinduism said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, is a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all.

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.

Surendra Ullal