Hindus welcome Pittsburgh’s Presbyterian Church offering free yoga classes

Hindus have welcomed East Liberty Presbyterian Church (ELPC) in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), whose history goes back to 1819, for offering free yoga classes.

Besides five different services during upcoming Holy Week, ELPC, also known as “The Cathedral of Hope”, is also offering free yoga classes titled “Cathedral Yoga” on Wednesday evenings in its Gothic Sanctuary, which are open to all.

Calling itself as “faithful disciples of Jesus Christ”, ELPC website states: “We seek to nurture yearning spirits, questioning minds, and an engaged faith in ourselves and others.” Reverend Dr. Randall K. Bush is Senior Pastor of ELPC, which is housed in a magnificent cathedral dedicated in 1935.

Welcoming ELPC for offering free yoga classes, distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, urged all the Pennsylvania public schools to introduce multi-beneficial yoga programs in their curriculums.

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 “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.