瑜伽-健身健心两不误

21世纪的发展看亚洲，亚洲的发展看中国与印度。“中国龙”与“亚洲象”同为世界文明古国，中国印度的友好交往历史由来已久。代表印度文化精髓的瑜伽已经被越来越多的国人接受，很多人已经深深的把瑜伽与印度连接在了一起，让瑜伽成为铸造和谐生活，以及与印度文化相连接的纽带。在2010年中印建交将满60周年之际，为促进中印友谊，加深两国之间民间文化交流，中印友协先后组织了很多活动，并取得巨大成功。其中不容忽视的就是“2010年中国国际瑜伽大会”，历时3天，吸引众多瑜伽爱好者近千人，并得到各界的好评。

Mohan from India is a teacher in China. He says he has lots of students, all of different ages.

"It's amazing I have students who are 11 or 20 years old, and also I have students who are 65 years old, so all groups of people."

What kind of class could suit students of such different ages? It could be nothing other than yoga. Mohan, who has been practicing yoga for 18 years, came to China in 2003 to be a yoga teacher.

"At that time yoga was still very young in China, and many times people ask me if yoga comes from America, because there was less information about yoga."

However, seven years later, he says he feels that for many students in China, yoga has become part of life.

"It's really wonderful that they are serious for practice. It's very clear, if you don't get benefit, you would never continue. I have students who started to practice since 2003, and till now, it's been 7 years for them with me."

Mohan says yoga tells people how to live a happy life. It not only makes the body healthy, but also quiets the mind. Lin Xiaohai, who teaches at a yoga school, is the general secretary of China Yoga 2010, a conference that just concluded in Beijing. He says:

"Currently in China, yoga has gained acceptance from more and more people. Now the living standards for people in China have been greatly improved, so an increasing number of people are starting to practice yoga."

Lin says many people turn to yoga at first in an attempt to lose weight, but gradually they find their physical discomfort greatly decreased.

"Such as insomnia, cervical spondylosis and so on. Also we have people who mentally have trouble, let's say, are experiencing a setback in life, through practicing yoga, they get the answer to the question of what we live for, that is, we live for happiness."

However, is it hard to learn these yoga poses? Mohan says compared to practitioners from other cultures, Chinese have advantages when learning yoga.

"I feel the cultures of India and China are very similar, we have such practices in yoga in India, and in China you have Taiji, Qigong, and Chinese medicine. So something is very close, and people know what the essence of the practice is. I feel they can understand the essence much better and faster, because already in their culture, they have the foundation of Qigong and Taiji, which work with the same principal of energy to control the mind and calm down the mind."

Recently when working people in both public and private organizations in Beijing have been encouraged to exercise during breaks in their office hours, a set of yoga exercises set to music has been selected as one of the options in Beijing.

For CRI, I am Zhang Wan.