Yoga camp in Elmsford, UK

August 1st, 2006

Elmsford in United Kingdom recently was host to one of the largest yoga camps in the world outside India.

The yoga camp was also the first outside India organized by Swami Ramdev, who is spearheading the yoga movement in India. “I am basically a nationalist, so my first priority is to set my own home in order”, he has said, so his Yoga camp in England was a notable event.

Swami Ramdev is the head of Patanjali Yog Peeth, a charitable institution which has a sophisticated hospital and research facility devoted to yoga and ayurveda.

The Elmsford yoga camp was a long time in coming as Swami had vowed to complete a planned number of yoga camps in India first. Under the banner of Patanjali, Swami and his team are working on a target of training 10,000 teachers in the discipline of yoga by the end of this year. While the process for reaching the target is in place, Swami can now concentrate on running yoga camps in other countries.

The Elmsford yoga camp was different from the ones normally organized in India. Here the participants and/or patients were asked to bring diagnostic reports about their health problems to the eight-day camp. As videos of the camp show, there were scores of testimonies by the participants on improvements in the health.

The participants reported relief in their problems, which ranged from obesity, blood pressure, diabetes, sinus, asthma to arthritis. There were quite a few participants who had been following up the yoga instructions of Swami on television through the live telecast of the camps in India. They told how they were coping with their mild to serious health problems and how yoga had helped them.

A lady from Elmsford, in her mid-fifties presented a moving testimony - “I suffered depression for more than ten years; I rarely slept soundly and never felt like eating too; I was losing my hair every time I touched my head”. She said that she had longed for an end to her life; yoga changed all that. “Now I sleep like a child and have a healthy appetite too; I am even getting my hair back” She said.

For the convenience of patients with blood pressure problems, sphygmomanometers were provided at the camp. The patients were asked to measure their BP on the first day of the camp and see if they improved at the end of it. All reported varying degrees of improvements.

There were a large number of Britons including some politicians, at the camp, as well as native indians, and everybody reported on time for the early morning starts for all eight days of the camp.

Speaking mostly in Hindi, Swami was particularly impressed with the British habits of punctuality and cleanliness when he said,” Not a single one I noticed coming in here late even by a single minute, and that’s the first and the basic quality a yogi must have”.

Entry Filed under: Yoga