Yoga is the union of the body with the breath.
the breath with the mind, and man with the source from which we came and to which we return. The world has tried to practise yoga to relieve pain and calm the restless mind, and yoga has generously provided these benefits.
Science now confirms what the sages silently knew: Steady the breathing, and you steady the heart. But yoga was never just about health; it is a way of life, a daily practice of restraint, awareness, gratitude and service. Yoga whispers to a weary world: slow down, breathe, come back to yourself, and you will find the divine waiting there.
It’s a miracle how far this gift travelled. Across the Gulf in the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, yoga is practised and loved by thousands, led by certified teachers, and is hailed by the Government of India and its embassies as a living bridge between civilisations.
Nouf Marwai, Saudi Arabia’s first certified yoga instructor and founder of the Arab Yoga Foundation, was awarded the Padma Shri in 2018; she is the first Arab recipient of this honour and now leads the Saudi Yoga Committee. His statement is evidence of a quiet truth: yoga does not conflict with one’s faith, because it asks nothing about faith and everything about sincerity. The practice does not change the mind; it clears it. A Muslim who breathes consciously becomes a better Muslim; A Christian who sits quietly prays more deeply; a Hindu who serves with awareness comes closer to God.
Long before the term ‘interfaith’ was coined, India’s Sufi and Nath yogis sat together not as strangers but as seekers. It is narrated in our shared heritage that the Chishti saint of Punjab, Hazrat Baba Farid Ganj-e-Shakar, met the wandering yogis of his age and exchanged the secrets of breath: a yogi’s pranayam and a Sufi’s habs-e-dum, guarding every breath in the memory of the beloved. Each recognised in the other a fellow climber from the same mountain, but by a different route. The disciplines of posture, breathing and stillness of mind of Gorakhnath and Nath yogis flowed to the spiritual soil of India and met with Zikr and Murakba, the Sufi science of Sufi meditation. That meeting brought not confusion, but compassion. This legacy is our civilisational heritage: unity without uniformity, unity that respects difference.
Beneath our many names, the human heart beats with a longing for God. The mat and prayer rug, asanas and sajdas, om and zikr are all the body’s ways of expressing the soul’s one word: return.
This practice, then, is the yoga for inter-religious harmony, not to weaken any tradition, but to discover the stable point where all traditions touch. In a world divided by borders, it offers a wordless peace that needs no translation. It heals the body so that the heart can be free.
When we breathe together, we cannot hate each other. May every breath drawn be a prayer for peace.
