Central government employees to attend a Medical Yoga workshop from Monday; Circular narrates benefits

COME July 7, Central government employees will gather in New Delhi’s Pandara Road to attend an unusual workshop on how to do Medical Yoga. One of the Central government agencies, Grih Kalyan Kendra is organizing this week-long workshop on Medical Yoga for the benefit of Central government employees and their families. Giving details of the benefits of Medical Yoga, a circular issued by the union ministry of personnel, public grievances and pension, says that…
the exercise would be beneficial for joint pains, lower back pains, diabetes and blood pressure. Grih Kalyan Kendra which issued the circular on July 1, comes under the administrative control of the union personnel ministry.
The timing of the workshop will be 7.30 to 8.30 in the morning for seven days beginning July 7, 2014, raising questions whether the employees will miss the 9 am deadline, strictly adhered by most of the new government ministers. Only recently, information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javdekar in a surprise check found many late-comers who he sent back home for the day on a casual leave.
According to Wikipedia, Medical Yoga is a blend of modern science and classical Hatha Yoga, and the asanas are being widely used in the treatment of osteoarthritis, spondylitis of neck or lower back, Type 2 diabetes, bronchial/allergic asthma, frozen shoulder etc. There are more than 50 centres in India delivering this kind of yoga therapy to patients, Wikipedia report adds.
For the government, Yoga is however not an alien subject. In fact, Yoga forms a part of one of the government departments named AYUSH or Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy department. It came into existence during Narasimha Rao’s regime in 1990s, but was renamed as AYUSH in 2003 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister.
Also, a government-appointed panel headed by 1964-batch retired IAS Kiran Aggarwal recently recommended the inclusion of yoga and meditation in physical training of IAS probationers.