Indian teaches visitors yoga on Nami Island

Abhijit Ghosh, an Indian yogi, helps a student with posture during a yoga class at Dong Seoul College in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, in this 2013 photo. / Courtesy of Abhijit Ghosh

By Kim Se-jeong

Abhijit Ghosh, 40, a yoga instructor from India, is inviting people to Nami Island in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province, this weekend where he will open yoga sessions for the general public.

His special yoga sessions are part of a week-long Indian cultural festival organized by the Indian Embassy in Seoul running until Sunday. The sessions will take place on Saturday and Sunday on the island, and anyone interested is welcome. “Just come to relax,” the yogi said.

The festival will feature another yoga session at Millennium Seoul Hilton on Saturday by another yoga instructor.

Ghosh teaches yoga at Dong Seoul College in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. He’s been teaching there for nine years.

The yogi said he is putting a lot of emphasis on raising awareness that yoga is not about physical fitness only. “Yoga is also about mentality,” he said.

Ghosh has been practicing yoga all his life. “I learned it from my father,” he said. Practicing Asana, a Sanskrit word for yoga posture, was a part of the daily routine in his home and village.

He went to a college majoring in arts and humanities. After graduating, he worked for Seva Bharati, an NGO that helps urban slum dwellers escape from poverty.

In 2001, he finally changed his mind and entered a yoga university in Bangalore, called Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana.

There, he got his doctoral degree in yoga and hypertension. He developed a yoga module _ a combination of Asana, breathing and meditation _ catering to people with high blood pressure. “My university has a medical center where people from all over the world come to learn how to treat their symptoms with yoga,” he said. He practiced his module with 350 patients with high blood pressure, and the results have been good.

At Dong Seoul College, he teaches almost 120 students yoga theory, philosophy and posture, among other subjects. What he’s particularly interested in is therapeutic yoga, and he is working on a new study. “I am trying to make yoga modules for five common illnesses among Koreans,” he said.

Celebrating the International Day of Yoga on June 21, he organized a street yoga event at COEX in Seoul for the public. He intermittently runs workshops for yoga instructors.

“Yoga means union to me,” He said. “(It’s) the union of people with universe.”