The yoga solution

Up to 30 women and 50 men attend separate one-hour classes between 6am and 8am at Sheba park each morning.

LAHORE: Beneath a bright green tent in a quiet corner of Defence’s Sheba Park, middle-aged and elderly women sit cross-legged on straw mats.

The 20 or so women shut their eyes and meditate, retaining the posture until ordered to reposition for the next step by a sprightly 75-year-old man with white hair and beard.

This is Abdul Rasheed, leader of daily morning yoga sessions that have revived the health and spirits of dozens battling the effects of ill health and aging. Up to 30 women and 50 men attend separate one-hour classes between 6am and 8am at the park each morning.

“Women suffering from blood pressure problems, arthritis, back ache, migraines and diabetes have told me that they have felt positive changes from exercising here,” he says.

Rasheed recalls his most rewarding moment as a yoga instructor. Not long ago, he says, a frail and elderly woman started coming to the yoga sessions.

“She had severe arthritis and was confined to a chair. Her movements were minimal and I advised her just to do as much as she could comfortably.”

A month later, she approached him with tears in her eyes and began showering him with blessings. “She said thanks to yoga, she had been able to offer prayers standing on her own two feet for the first time in 30 years,” says Rasheed, as his eyes well up. “It was the day I felt my dedication had paid off.”

Another student with severe arthritis had been able to climb the stairs to the upper storey of her house for the first time in 10 years after starting yoga classes.

“Just as our spirit needs to seek the righteous path, our bodies need yoga to function well,” he says. “A person can gain 10 years or so if they practise with concentration and punctuality.”

He speaks from personal experience, having suffered a heart attack brought on by obesity 22 years ago. Rasheed says he had never consumed alcohol, caffeine or cigarettes, but his doctor found that hard to believe because of his ill health.

After bypass surgery in London, he sought to change his sedentary lifestyle. On a business trip to South Korea, he encountered a group of yoga practitioners in a park near his hotel and joined in. “It was a significant change that motivated me to learn and instruct,” he says.

Rasheed read up extensively on the subject and took lessons in India and Japan. He started practising regularly in Peshawar, and then at Liberty Park when he moved to Lahore in 1993.

“Other men who regularly jogged or walked in the park started joining me,” he says. For 15 years, he led morning yoga sessions there before moving to Sui Gas Society near Defence. He moved his yoga sessions to Sheba Park in DHA’s Sector Y. One morning last October, five years later, he was asked by Fatima Nisar, a regular park visitor, to start classes for women. He readily agreed and the green tent was set up to give them a private space in which to exercise.

As the classes became more popular, Nisar suggested registering those interested in coming regularly.

“Rasheed Yoga Club” now has 110 registered women members and 150 men, and Nisar says that the number is increasing almost every day.

The growing popularity of yoga has not gone unnoticed. “The DHA Club contacted me once but I don’t want to or have any intention of making money off this,” Rasheed says.

Of his own health, he says he has not been sick or taken any medicine since he started practising.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 17^th, 2010.