Yoga is a great teacher: Haryana CM Khattar

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar follows his daily passion for yoga which he says helps him to keep calm and balance. In between meetings and long hours spent behind the desk, he manages to find time for breathing exercises and other yogic asanas.

“Yoga is a great teacher. It helps keeping one’s body, mind and soul in perfect sync,” Khattar told IANS in an interview here. He said yoga has taught him how to keep his feet firmly on the ground.

“It’s a great virtue which teaches you how to keep your cool, calm and poise and even out the odds while negotiating the ups and down of life,” said the 61-year-old bachelor, known for his clean image and working round-the-clock.

A firm believer in the concept of simple living and high thinking, Khattar, who has a strong RSS ideology, can enter the kitchen to make tea for himself.

Practising yoga every morning, Khattar said: “Yoga can enable one to achieve undisturbed calmness of mind, have compassion for the less blessed ones, be on the side of virtue and shun the wicked.”

“In fact, think deep and you will find a sure linkage between yoga and the sermon of the Gita on karma,” he said while performing deep-breathing exercises on his lawn.

The chief minister has no qualms in saying: “I derive the strength to do so from yoga which keeps your body fit, mind healthy and kills negativity which finds roots when body, mind and soul are not in sync.”

“I sleep very less. Pranayama and deep breathing keep me energetic throughout the day,” said Khattar, who is at the helm for the first time and earned the reputation of a tough task master.

A state-level function will be organised on International Yoga Day June 21 in Karnal at which Khattar would be the chief guest and about 21,000 yoga trainees would participate in it.

The chief minister said 1,000 ‘vyayam shalas’ or fitness centres would be opened in rural areas to take yoga to the grassroots in the first phase.

He said the government would appoint trainers in these centres to train the youth.

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev gave the chief minister full marks as a practitioner of yoga at the two-day training camp for the ministers, legislators and bureaucrats in Panchkula on June 15, where most of his cabinet colleagues failed to do exercises.

Asked how he manages to keep his cool, Khattar flashed a smile before giving the credit to yoga that he has been practising since early childhood.