Yoga practice not anti-Christian

Letters

I AM writing to express my displeasure at your continuous publication of letters claiming or depicting yoga as a religion that is anti-Christian.
While I understand it is at your discretion to publish such letters, at  least some research and a disclaimer at the bottom to suggest that you do not believe in such nonsense would have been tolerated.
As you know, yoga has been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as a form of holistic exercise that addresses mental, physical and emotional wellbeing and health of people.
Over 179 countries voted to recognise and endorse yoga and therefore declared June 21 as World Yoga Day.
I would be surprised, if you, an editor of a major paper in PNG, do not know this as it has been publicised worldwide since 2015 by the United Nations Development Programme office here.
We have even celebrated the World Yoga Day two years in succession in PNG.
So it is not unintelligent of me to assume you have a political agenda shared with the writer Mr Bonny Igime.
It is a well-known fact in NCD that Igime is intending to contest the NCD regional seat after having failed in his bid to be city manager.  It is his agenda to make such stupid claims against a programme that we support and I personally participate in proudly with the community.
I can’t believe that one of our major newspapers is not aware of this fact.
When the letter was first published, I just ignored it.
When it was run again, I was a bit concerned and when you ran it the third time, it gave me the impression that you might be supporting Igime’s agenda to discredit our programme — a programme that has nothing to do with religion or being anti-Christian.
Also it is important for readers, especially Igime, to know that we spend a lot of money to support Christian churches in NCD.
In 2016, for example, we spent nearly K1.5m to directly support various churches and their programmes in the city.
We also support and expedited millions to support church-run schools in the city.
In addition to that, we also spent almost K700,000 each year to fund the Christmas programme in the city for the past eight to nineyears.
How can we be anti-Christian or against Christianity with that type of support to churches and Christian programmes in our city?  It is purely a political propaganda and as newspapers, I urge you to be neutral to such claims and scrutinise politically-motivated letters to the editor and also do some research before publishing such letters, again and again.
Last October, your paper published a story with the headline, “Yoga recognised by the Vatican”.
One of our Yoga for life teachers was invited by Pope Francis to participate in a conference he hosted called Sports in The Service of Humanity in light of the programme that we are running in the city, where we use sports and non-competitive sports to serve humanity, giving accessibility, inclusion and participation because the Pope believes that sports has the power to do that.
If yoga was anti-Christian, do you think we would get such an invitation and our programme such recognition, with Port Moresby represented in such a positive way, highlighting how we are serving the greater good of humanity, especially with marginalised communities?
World leaders like Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, are all practitioners of yoga because they know how beneficial it can be.
Even here in PNG, the current Catholic Bishop Conference secretary-general Fr Victor Roach used to be a practitioner of yoga and we run classes for Catholic nuns in the City as well.
You can check out the St Mary’s church in downtown Port Moresby and St Joseph’s church in Boroko and speak to the nuns there directly on their involvement in the yoga programme and learn how it is also supporting their feeding and literacy programmes for street children.
On a personal note, yoga has improved my health, fitness and wellness and has helped me to have mental, physical, emotional and psychological balance in my life.
I am a proud yoga practitioner and will continue to promote this programme that is reaching out to many people in our city as part of shifting our people to take ownership and responsibility for their health and to address other wider social issues affecting young people in our city and country.
I propose an apology from your newspaper to the thousands of yoga practitioners in the city, to all Christians who are also yoga practitioners for this ridiculous assumptions and non-credible reporting on your part.

Hon Powes Parkop
NCD Governor