Welcoming Cathay Pacific on reportedly creating a “dedicated yoga and meditation space” in its lounge at Hong Kong International Airport, Hindus are urging other major airlines of the world to offer yoga facilities at their respective hub airports.
This space, named as “The Sanctuary”, is a “700 square-foot area divided into two zones – The Body Sanctuary, which is dedicated to yoga, and The Mind Sanctuary, where travellers can meditate to focus and calm the mind.”
Besides a secluded space for self-practice, it also includes gentle yoga with guided videos led by yoga teachers and seated stretching. It also offers two types of meditation—audio meditation and gazing meditation, reports suggest.
Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, termed it as a step in the positive direction to make yoga and meditation available to passengers at the airport. He urged other world airlines to follow.
Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization; Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.
Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.
According to a recent report of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: “Yoga is the most popular complementary health approach in the United States – used by 14.3% of the adult population, or 35.2 million people”. According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.
Founded in 1946, Hong Kong-based awards-winning Cathay Pacific Group (which includes Cathay Pacific, Cathay Dragon, and AHK Air Hong Kong airlines) offers scheduled passenger and cargo services to over 200 destinations in Asia, North America, Australia, Europe and Africa. John Slosar and Rupert Hogg are Chairman and CEO respectively.
