Alberta: A Catholic elementary school in Alberta (Canada) treated its students with a yoga class on May four as a part of Mental Health Awareness Week initiative.

Ecole Our Lady of the Rosary School (EOLRS) in Sylvan Lake, a Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 2 publicly funded English-French Catholic school, whose “Motto” is “Learning, Listening and Following Jesus” and which provides “education in a Catholic environment”, has posted four pictures on its Facebook of pupils doing yoga.

Welcoming EOLRS for offering multi-faceted yoga to its students as Mental Health Awareness Week activity, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, urged all Canadian public and private schools to launch yoga programs for various benefits.

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, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. 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.

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 was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.

Local Blyss Yoga; which quoted India’s renowned yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar (“It is through your body that you realize you are a spark of divinity.”) on its website; reportedly conducted the class.

Mission of EOLRS includes “committed to making Christ known to children” and its website states: “Our Catholic faith is nurtured and experienced in all classes, celebrations, and prayer”. Diane Kulczycki is the EOLRS Principal, Dr. V. Paul Mason is Superintendent of Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools and Father Les Drewicki is the Parish Priest.