Hindus laud White House for including Yoga in Easter Egg Roll activities

Hindus have applauded White House for including yoga in “133rd White House Easter Egg Roll” held in the South Lawn of White House in Washington DC on April 25.

 A “Yoga Garden” is one of the “highlights” of the event. “Come enjoy a session of yoga from professional instructors”, the official White House Blog says about the Yoga Garden and adds: “Kids will be able to relax and learn yoga moves in the Yoga Garden”.

 Welcoming the White House gesture to include yoga in Easter Egg Roll events, Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, yoga was a world heritage to be benefitted from and utilized and shared by all. Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, pointed out that yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, was one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy. According to Patanjali, who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga is a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical. According to National Institutes of Health, Yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress.About 30,000 people from all over USA are participating in this event, which besides traditional Easter egg hunt and egg roll also includes live music, storytelling, instructional dance party, obstacle course, basketball and tennis, arts and crafts workshop, kids’ kitchen, etc., for which 205,739 tickets were requested through the online public lottery. Children will have the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of basketball and tennis from professional athletes on the President’s court. Almost 60 volunteer face painters are participating in this event to be held from 7:30 am to 6:20 pm.The Easter Egg Roll is a White House tradition dating back to 1878 and President Rutherford B. Hayes, but there are records of informal egg rolling events as early as Abraham Lincoln’s administration. The First Lady is the official host of the White House Easter Egg Roll.

 Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ, is the greatest and oldest feast of the Christianity.