SARVAM organizes Yoga Classes for the students every year in their Satyam Campus, Poothurai Village on account of International Day of Yoga. The main objective of arranging this yoga class is to create awareness amongst the students about the importance of practicing Yoga and to help them learn some useful and important asanas that can be practiced every day at home.  Adults, children of various villages take part in this yoga session and learn asanas. It also helped them to know about the necessity of practicing yoga.

This year, due to the Corona Pandemic, SARVAM was unable to organize yoga session in their campus.  Hence, a Google Meet online platform was used to commemorate International Day of Yoga. Volunteers, Village Coordinators and Digital Sakhis those who are having laptops, tablets or smart phones were motivated to select 5 students. Each of them chose 5 members and assembled them either in their terrace or an open place with masks and maintaining physical distance. With the help of the Laptops, Digital Tablets or smart phones, all participants joined the video class. A link was sent to each of the Volunteers, Village Coordinators and Digital Sakhis and by clicking that, everyone was connected to the Yoga Master who was conducting this class from his house. Around 125 members participated in this online yoga class from 22 surrounding villages.

Initially, the yoga master explained theoretically about the importance of practicing yoga in our day-to-day life. He explained that yoga is the easiest method to connect to the nature by balancing the mind-body connection. Yoga master went on and narrated that yoga is a type of exercise which is performed to have control over diet, breathing, and physical postures. He also said that yoga is associated with the meditation of body and mind through the relaxation of body. With the help of short videos, the master said that yoga can be practiced by anyone as an exercise on daily basis to fulfill the need of very active and demanding life especially teenagers and adults. He ended the theoretical session by saying that yoga helps in coping up with the hard times of the life and pressures of school, friends, family and neighbours. This session was very much useful for the students. They understood the significance of yoga.

Then the yoga master helped the participants to practice few simple asanas which they can regularly perform at home. All the participants, with the help of Google Meet Platform, saw what the yoga master did and performed the same. This was much useful for all of them and they all learned asanas easily.

The lock-down have put the children inside their homes.  The students are sitting idle at home and most of them are stressed and have become lethargic. In order to keep the students active, SARVAM has started conducting online competitions for students with the help of coordinators. Competitions such as Dancing, Singing, Painting, Elocution, Yoga, Poetry Writing, Handcrafts and various other competitions are conducted every week. Students are asked to post their talents as videos and pictures in the Whatsapp number which is shared with them. This activity keeps the students engaged and helps them to identify their talents and polish them even further.

This is the first time, SARVAM has involved students in the Google Meet Online platform for the International Day of Yoga. Though the women were already used to it, students were exposed to online training. Many students were very much enthused to attend the online video class and they were very happy to be a part of it. With great enthusiasm they learned all the asanas and also requested SARVAM to organize more online classes like this so that they will be able to learn a lot of things during this lock-down period.

SARVAM is planning to organize more such online classes for the students and help them enhance their skills and confidence level. This yoga class was as an experimental project with huge success and hence in the days to come, many such sessions are planned to be executed.