Colorado Senate committee blocks yoga regulation

Hindus have commended Colorado Senate Education Committee for the bill preventing Division of Private Occupational Schools from regulating yoga instruction in the state.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who strongly criticized the attempts to regulate yoga in the past by various states in USA, in a statement in Nevada today, thanked the Colorado senators involved for attempts to prevent yoga regulation and organizations/yogis/individuals who campaigned for it, as the regulation would be an unnecessary obtrusion and burdensome on yoga in Colorado.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, stated that yoga, whose traces went back to around 2000 BCE, never had any formal organization and yoga practice had been handed down from one guru to the next.

Rajan Zed further said that ancient Hindu scripture Mahabharata indicated that one unconversant with yoga could never have happiness while Yogabija Upanishad pointed out that one became liberated from bondage only through yoga. Why to regulate such a liberation powerhouse, Zed asked.

Zed noted that yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline by means of which the human-soul (jivatman) united with universal-soul (parmatman). For Patanjali, author of the basic text, the Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche and regulating it was kind of a religious infringement, Rajan Zed added.

About 21 million Americans, including many celebrities, are said to practice yoga.

Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal. There are about three million Hindus in USA.