Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Scores of peo­ple turned up at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day to mark In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Yo­ga. The event, host­ed by the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion in T&T, in­vit­ed par­tic­i­pants to take part in a yo­ga ses­sion.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Nicholas Mor­ris, and Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Ravi Rati­ram were among the at­ten­dees.

In his ad­dress, Mor­ris be­gan by ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia, which con­tin­ues to mourn the trag­ic loss of life fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing crash of Air In­dia Flight 171 ten days ago.

Mor­ris, who took part in the event, said, “This year’s theme, ‘Yo­ga for One Earth, One Health’, is both time­ly and pro­found. It re­minds us that our per­son­al well-be­ing is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked to the health of our plan­et. Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, one in four glob­al deaths is as­so­ci­at­ed with en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. A healthy plan­et nur­tures healthy peo­ple—and vice ver­sa. The choic­es we make, from what we con­sume to how we move through the world, have a rip­ple ef­fect on our shared ecosys­tem.”

Mor­ris said that in T&T yo­ga has be­come more and more pop­u­lar with new stu­dios emerg­ing across the coun­try, “mak­ing the prac­tice more ac­ces­si­ble to peo­ple from all walks of life”.

This year marks the 11th In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Yo­ga. This year’s theme echoes a vi­tal truth that per­son­al well­ness and plan­e­tary health are in­sep­a­ra­bly linked.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, yo­ga strength­ens the body, calms the mind and fos­ters a height­ened sense of aware­ness and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in dai­ly life.