Dear Friends,
International YOGA DAY with Sumitra Sekaran,Founder & Director of Yoga House, 21 June, 2025 (Sat) Sutra House, (Yoga Hse 010 927 6959)
As most of us now realise, Yoga is one of the great gifts of India to the world. Especially now when we are under such turbulent times, Yoga, provides us with a wholistic wellness discipline, not only to be in tune with our body, but also to cope with stress and help us stay calm.
In reality, Yoga is for all times. It benefits the practitioners in good, bad or boring times.
Yoga shares with Dance the same progenitor in the form of Lord Siva, who is the original ‘AdiYogi’ and ‘Nataraja’ (Lord of Dance).
However, now, no one considers Yoga as a religion but as a meditative discipline and that of wellness of being.
For dancers, it helps to centre and integrate the yin and yang, to balance our physical, emotional and psychical energies.
It is to celebrate and to pay tribute to this wonderful ancient mind-body discipline that I decided to rally a few Sutra dancers on International Yoga Day on 21 June, to join in a Yoga session with my good friend, Yoga guru, Sumitra Sekaran, before our hectic rehearsal.
Sumitra is founder and director of the Yoga House, a bustling boutique yoga studio, in Petaling Jaya not far from where I live in Section 16, PJ.
An established Yoga instructor, Sumitra has been practicing Yoga for the last 30 years. She does the Iyengar School of Yoga and is adept not only in the practice of Yoga as well as its theory and philosophy.
Sumitra gave us a splendid Yoga session, specially curated for the dancer. The Yoga asanas and exercises helped to stretch tired muscles and coordinate our breathing. It grounds us back to a relaxed state after heavy schedule of rehearsals and demanding deadlines.
It was a splendid morning at Amphi-Sutra and we were joined by Geethika Sree, model Vanizha Vasanthanathan, Jagyandatta Pradhan (Rudrakshya, Odisha).
We were delighted to be eventually joined by Odissi guru, Guru Gajendra Panda and his son, dancer, Prabutosh Panda.
They are presently in Sutra preparing us for our next Odissi production, ‘Radhe! Radhe!’ to be premiered in October, 2025.
Sutra