Yoga Yajna Conclusion event Feb 3rd Saturday 2018 - A report
Yoga Bharati has been conducting Yoga Yajna (SNY) for more than 5 years now. In the recent years it has been offered twice a year, winter and summer as a 21 day Yoga challenge.
Yoga Bharati has conducted population studies with yogic parameters to show the effectiveness of Yoga, mainly suryanamaskars and Om chanting. Starting of the year with a physical and mindfulness discipline for the body and mind brings in health and happiness in individuals and families.
Many such resources and facts are given on yoga bharati webpage at https://yogabharati.org/yogayajna/
This year yoga yajna had to offer much more than the inauguration and the closing events. Yoga Bharati also offered and supported daily practices for the participants by 3 weeks of free practices of protocol. Our Executive director Ashwini Surpur had put together a one hour yoga asana protocol around Suryanamaskars and pranayama and Om meditation. Many of our teacher volunteers conducted the morning 6.30 to 7.30 am classes including Shilpa Kurkut, Vandana Pathak, Bina Desai, Minakshi Rai, Anil Surpur, Ashwini Surpur, Shobha Charagondla and Savita Joshi.
Feb 3rd, Saturday was a day for yet another year of Yoga Yajna conclusion (formerly Suryanamaskar yajna) at Yoga Bharati. Yoga Bharati President Anil Surpur, Yoga Therapy Director Savita Joshi, Events coordinator Siddu Rati, Therapy Coordinator Reshma Amin and Education coordinator Rima Shah led the event.
There were many other volunteers Nikhita Malladi, Parul Africawala, Urmi Kandpal, Dhivya Ravi and Ratna Ullagaddi and many more volunteers helped execute the event.
We started with subtle body practices and loosening exercises. Three areas were dedicated to the practice; classic suryanamaskars, neck/back pain suryanamaskars and chair suryanamaskars. Main area led the classic suryanamaskars.
Group of close to 50 participants, men, women, kids and our seniors (ages 7 to 70 years approximately) started with individual Sankalpas (intention setting) to practice 108 Suryanamaskars.
Event started sharp at 7 am with Tontakashtakam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=rcLOL90OFrA) music to complete 9 sets of 12 suryanamaskars each. Yoga Bharati follows 10 step classic form of Suryanamaskars. So total 1080 asanas aimed to complete in 90 min. We followed 1 min of rest while listening to beautiful quotes of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhiji and Martin Luther king during the 1 min rest in between.
We closed the event after 12 sets (108) suryanamaskars around 90 min after the start. Participants were asked to perform back relieving stretches in the supine pose like lumbar stretches, and pavana muktasana, rolling practices. Deep relaxation technique with chants helped us to connect ourselves with our deep silence and existence.
Our youngest participant 7 years old Meenakshi also completed all 108 rounds. Team energy was such that our seniors refused to take the chair but did their practice on the mat and most of them completed at least 50 rounds.
One of the yoga yajna participant Anil Surpur gave his feedback about the Sankalpa and his actual practice. He was feeling sick the day prior to the event and was almost about to skip the session. “Sankalpa (intention) setting helped me to wake up and reach ON time to the event and complete all 108!”
Few statistics of the 2018 Yajna (as of Feb 2nd evening)
Total registrants - 114+
Female participants - 81
Male participants - 33
Participation:
Age range - 8 years to 70 years
Children less than 18 years - 18
Children less than 10 - 10
Suryanamaskars reported - 6,228
Aum reported - 7,296
Female reported - 453 (Savita Joshi), 420 (Rajani Sinha), 286 (Vanaja Jagini)
Male - 644 (Santosh Kulkarni), 444 (Vikram Pandita), 300 (Paresh Africawala)
Instructions lead 24 FREE yoga sessions online and coaching sessions at 6.30 to 7.30 am including 3 Inaugural sessions and 1 closing session.
Group had healthy snacks and herbal teas after the practice. Everyone left from the place with a sense of accomplishment and carrying the strength and courage to accomplish anything their lives