Yogathon 2012

http://www.yogathon.in/

On 7^th April, on account of World’s Health day, the Art of Living foundation had organized an event “Yogathon” to create awareness about Yoga – an age old Indian practice. Similar to the Marathon where the participants have to complete the challenge by running a fixed number of yards, the Yogathon made the participants execute 108 Suryanamaskars to conquer the challenge.

Though the event was happening on a large scale in Thane, me along with a teacher and 3 other volunteers were entrusted the responsibility of conducting this event in Laxmibai school in Mulund. The thought of handling kids in school sent shivers down my spine. I started thinking “When I was in school I never listened to my teachers, why the hell will these kids listen to me?”

Expecting a lot of chaos we reached the venue at around 6 o clock in the morning. The event was supposed to happen in the auditorium. We met the physical trainer of the school who told us that the students where in the classroom and would come down as soon as the arrangements were done. I saw the empty auditorium and said to myself “is this the lull before the storm? Oh God save me from these children!!” 

Me and couple of other volunteers finished arranging the sound system and told the trainer to bring in the children. Down walked the children amidst lots of noise and chaos. Arranging them in a row according to the height was a herculean task. No student is ready to believe the other one is taller! Then started the usual cribbing the students do “Sir he is kicking me, Sir he is pushing me, Sir he is beating me”. It was fun to listen to their complaints though.

Before starting the event, the trainer had told us that it would be impossible for children to complete 108 namaskars .It was then amicably decided that students would be doing only 10 rounds (20 Suryanamaskars). I was assigned the role of a photographer. That role gave me lot of attention from the children. Whenever i held the camera near my eyes, students would pose unknowing that they are not even the frame. It was quite funny to watch children push each other to get into the frame. 

As soon as the trainer blowed the whistle, suddenly there was pindrop silence in the auditorium. Then the teacher started giving the count for suryanamskars. The students looked with curious eyes as me and couple of other volunteers demonstrated the entire exercise. The students picked up the exercise quite quickly and completed the intitial rounds quite easily. As soon as the number of rounds increased, the grimaces on their face and the moaning started exponentially increasing. Finally after 10 rounds, when they were on the verge of giving up the students gave a sigh of relief after the teacher told them to relax and lie down on the ground. The torchure was over!!!

After relaxing for a while, the students gleefully told us that they were feeling energetic much to the joy of our organizing team. The trainer congratulated and thanked us for organizing such a great event in their school. He told us that the Yoga is skill that originated in India and we are slowly losing it to the Western countries. He was happy to see us take initiative to make people aware about the power of Yoga.

When I started the day, I was kicking myself for getting up so early on a weekend, but when I saw student’s faces and heard such good things from the trainer it really made the day worthwhile.