A year later, Modi went the extra mile, tweeting videos showing an animated version of him doing yoga poses. In 2019, after the final day of national polling, he retreated to a Himalayan mountain cave to meditate and seek isolation - with a camera crew that relayed live visuals to the entire nation. In 2018 he posted a two-minute video on Twitter that showed him doing a range of yoga poses in a garden, including stretching and leaning backwards on a rock in a spread-armed savasana that birthed many memes. Modi has also been living la vida yoga, flexing his own hardcore devotion to the practice. The Indian military has done downward dog with trained K-9 units, boat pose atop an aircraft carrier and mountain pose in the high-altitude Himalayas in bone-chilling temperatures. Government bureaucrats and officers have taken to social media to show themselves folding in different poses and sometimes tiredly grabbing their backs after mass outdoor yoga sessions. Modi has promoted yoga so much that even foreign diplomats have been seen stretching themselves in gardens and their embassy offices.ĪLSO READ | Biden is ready to fete Modi, looking past human rights record, ties to Russia Since then, Modi has harnessed yoga as a cultural soft power to stretch his nation's diplomatic reach and flex his country's rising place in the world. Nine years ago, the Hindu nationalist leader successfully lobbied the UN to designate June 21 as International Yoga Day. The whole world should do Yoga 365 days," he says. When our PM can do Yoga daily, why can't the common person do it? We should make Yoga compulsory in schools. "He (Modi) is the busiest man, despite that he practices daily. Goel says yoga should be a daily practice worldwide, no matter how busy a person is. "Today, even the Muslim countries learn and follow it, only because of the PM." He says the activity is "India's contribution to the world." "Our prime minister has done a great job in spreading yoga to the world," Goel said. Surinder Goel, a 61-year-old yoga instructor in the capital, New Delhi, practices daily.
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