Preparations for International Yoga Day now in top gear as India seeks to extend its soft-power

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<strong>India is pulling all stops to  celebrate International Yoga Day  (IYD), with serial online events that will be hosted at home and abroad, with foreign missions playing a pivotal role. The initiative is a major undertaking to extend India's soft power across the globe.</strong></p>
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Since 2015, 21st June has been observed as International Day of Yoga all over the world.</p>
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With travelling is not advisable during the prevailing second wave of Covid-19 pandemic the Tourism Ministry and its offices across India and abroad have initiated various online programmes based on the theme given by the Ministry of Ayush “Be With Yoga Be At Home”.</p>
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As Yoga forms an important aspect of wellness and good health, the Ministry of Tourism would be promoting yoga as an amalgamation of wellness tourism and spiritual tourism. To highlight this, various major tourist places in India which are well known for spiritual and wellness tourism will be showcased.</p>
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The importance of Yoga will be brought to the fore through posts, pictures, videos during the weeklong Yoga Day Celebrations. These mediums will showcase the importance of Yoga and these will be shared on the Ministry’s various social media platforms.</p>
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With the objective of making people aware about Yoga and inspiring them to do it, the Ministry of Tourism is also planning to conduct live sessions with experienced yoga teachers, bloggers and influencers about how Yoga transformed their life.</p>
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The Tourism Ministry will be organising a webinar “Yoga for Immunity”, based on this year’s theme “Be With Yoga Be At Home”. This programme will be held on June 19 (Saturday) from 11 a.m. onwards. The webinar is being held in association with the Isha Foundation.</p>
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To make the webinar interesting and engaging, during the event, a Yoga expert from Isha Foundation will be demonstrating Simha Kriya, a simple but powerful yogic practice to improve immunity and overall strength.</p>
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The field offices of the Ministry of Tourism across the country and the world have planned various programmes to ensure the wide participation of the people from different segments of the society and from all age groups. The attempt is to create more awareness about Yoga and how to live a healthy lifestyle.</p>
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The various programmes emphasizing the importance of yoga in our day-to-day includes online essay, quiz, painting, yoga poster design competitions for students, conducting webinar with live demonstration of yoga, E-yoga book and many more!</p>
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Additional information on all these events can be accessed by following Incredible India on</p>
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