International Yoga Day Celebration in UK Parliament
Members of British Parliament honour leader of Maharishi’s worldwide Transcendental Meditation organisation at International Yoga Day celebration in UK Parliament, 10 July.
The third International Yoga Day was celebrated in the House of Commons, Palace of Westminster, hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Indian Traditional Sciences, and sponsored by the High Commission of India. The APPG on Indian Traditional Sciences is a group of over 30 MPs and Lords in the British Parliament in London. The conference was designed to explore the value of introducing Yoga in the National Health Services (NHS), which provides healthcare for all UK citizens.
This year’s event featured Tony Nader MD, PhD, MARR who was key presenter and was honored with a special award for his achievements under the guidance of His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
Special guests also included His Excellency High Commissioner Y K Sinha, who paid tribute to the work of the APPG on Indian Traditional Sciences in popularising Yoga, Ayurveda and other disciplines in the mainstream of public life. Also in attendance were Virendra Sharma MP, Chair of APPG, Tom Brake MP Vice Chair, and Vice Presidents Lord Hussain and Tanmanjit Singh Dhinsa MP.
The Kala Yugandhara Award to Dr. Nader was presented by the High Commissioner and Mr Singh [see Picture 2]. Amarjeet S Bhamra, APPG Secretariat, said: “Kala Yugandhara means Universal Enlightened Master of All Arts and Sciences.”
Responding, Dr Nader said: ‘This is entirely unexpected, and the credit should go to His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, from whom the profound knowledge of the full value of Yoga comes.’
During his keynote address Dr. Nader proposed that in a scientific age it was important to bring out the scientific basis of Yoga and show the rationale behind Yoga’s benefits. He presented [see Picture 3 and 4] to the Right Hon. Tom Brake MP, APPG Vice Chairman, five of the seven volumes of Scientific Research on the Transcendental Meditation Programme – Collected Papers, comprising over 600 scientific research studies on the benefits of Transcendental Meditation; and to Virendra Sharma MP, APPG Chairman, he presented [see picture 5] five volumes of his unique research on the precise correlation between the structure of the human physiology and the 40 areas of the Vedic literature, of which Yoga is one.
‘The four chapters of Yoga,’ Prof Nader said, ‘correspond in both structure and function to the four lobes of the human brain. The same is true at the next level of consideration, where the sutras in each chapter corresponds in number, structure and function to the cortical folds in each of the lobes of the brain. Every one of us has within us, built in to our very physiology, the essential quality of Yoga, which is unifying.’
Transcendental Meditation, Dr Nader said, gives direct experience of evenness of mind, or samadhi, the most fundamental of the eight aspects of Yoga, with the result that the unifying and balancing quality starts to increase in the individual’s life, and even in the life of society, as the extensive scientific research on TM has shown. The experience of samadhi, he said, is the experience of one’s true Self (transcending one’s narrow small self), and this experience naturally gives rise to more responsible citizenship and broader, unified thinking.
Dr. Nader received a standing ovation for his presentation, which was followed by a beautiful letter being read by Mr. Singh from Her Majesty the Queen sending best wishes to the conference.
A beautiful demonstration of classical Indian dance from Vidhi Sodhi and Ragasudha Vinjamuri was the perfect finish to this third Yoga Day conference.
See here a 38 minutes video on Youtube on the event.
