World’s First Yoga University Outside India Named After Swami Vivekananda
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s part of the sixth International Yoga Day commemorations, the world’s first yoga university outside India opened in Los Angeles, California, offering programs that combine scientific principles and modern research approaches to the ancient Indian practice of yoga. The Vivekananda Yoga University (VaYU) is said to be the brainchild of Dr. H. R. Nagendra, a former NASA scientist, who has been working on converting yoga into a socially relevant science for the last four decades. Dr. Nagendra, Chancellor of Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (SVYASA), is the first Chairman of VaYU. VaYU has established its initial campus in Los Angeles with a budget of 5 million USD. Sree Sreenath, a Professor from Case Western University, has been named its first president. VaYU was jointly launched on June 23, 2020, by Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan and Chairperson of the Standing Committee on External Affairs P P Chaudhary during a virtual event held at the Consulate General of India in New York. Addressing the virtual launch, Muraleedharan said, “Swami Vivekananda gave the message of universal brotherhood from the US and through the first of its kind
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yoga university outside India, the message of yoga will be broadcast from America to the world.” In his message, Dr. Nagendra, well known as the yoga consultant to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Swami Vivekananda “heralded the grandeur” of Indian yoga dimension to the world through his famous speech in Chicago in 1893. “As Swami Vivekananda said education is the manifestation of perfection already in man, VAYU aims at providing manmaking and nation-building education by promoting an allround personality development in students of generation next,” Dr. Nagendra said. He noted that the university “combines best of the East and best of the West. Best of the East is yoga and its applications and the best of the West is modern scientific research.” The event was jointly hosted by the Consulate General and Jaipur Foot USA Chairperson
and founding director of VaYU Prem Bhandari. “It is further to the efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was instrumental in getting the UN declaration of International Day of Yoga on June 21st, his yoga guru H R Nagendra’s team’s hard work which made the establishment of a yoga university in US a reality,” said Bhandari. India’s Consul General in New York Sandeep Chakravorty said that New York has deep ties with yoga as many years ago Swami Vivekananda spent time in the city and wrote books on yoga which popularized the Indian practice all over the world. Founded on the principles of Swami Vivekananda’s preion for universal welfare, VaYU will offer online graduate programs based on scientific principles and modern research approaches to yoga. For enrollment eligibility and more information, visit www.vayuusa.org.
JULY 2020 - WWW.DESHVIDESH.COM
