Opinion: Yoga Serves as São Paulo's Indian Connection

06/21/2015 - 06h00

Exactly five years ago when my first flight to Brazil was landing in São Paulo, I looked down my window with a touch of panic. It seemed as if the aircraft was going to land over a grey haze with millions of lights jammed into it.

Out of the airport as I drove to the heart of city, Marlene Dietrich's famous words came to my mind. "Rio is a beauty. But São Paulo... São Paulo is a city," the actress once said during a tour of Brazil. In the next few week, as I explored the city, it appeared like a concrete jungle of streets, blocks, highways and endless traffic.

But it had a different side too: parks, street bars, open-air restaurants, pizza corners, huge malls, big football stadiums and theatres. It was fantastic and fearful at the same time. I was certain there could be never be a dull moment in this humongous megalopolis.

	Edilson Dantas/Folhapress
	A large number of people from Brazil go to India every year to learn yoga in various ashrams and institutions

Two years later, when I returned to Sao Paulo to live - and report - from South America's financial capital, like a typical foreign correspondent I began to search for the city's India connection for some features for readers back home.

Of course, I didn't expect to encounter a "Little India", as the neighborhoods dominated by huge Indian population, shops, restaurants and Bollywood theatres are called in cities like London, Chicago and Toronto, but I wanted to find at least some Indian angle. It was disappointing. There were just four Indian restaurants in Sao Paulo. Three more had recently shut shop. No theatre showed Bollywood films. No connection with India.

Then one day, somebody told me that there were more than 500 yoga studios in Sao Paulo. A week later, another person hiked that figure to 1,000. It was pretty hard to believe these figures.

But as I drove on the roads snaking through wooded hills and middle-class condominiums, I began to notice yoga schools here and there. During morning walks in my neighborhood of Pinheiros, I noticed yoga studios on almost every street. In the lanes of Vila Mariana, famous for night life, I saw several yoga studios sitting side by side with bars and restaurants.

Even on the busy Avenida Paulista and its many bylanes towards the Jardins area, I saw various studios tucked into street corners. Even in New York, where I worked as a correspondent many years ago, and New Delhi, where I come from, I have not seen so many yoga schools and studios. I began to believe that Sao Paulo may have more than 1,000 yoga studios.

For me, the most impressive thing was that different kind of studios were teaching various techniques, ranging from very difficult Ashtanga Yoga to quite fashionable Hot Yoga. The other thing which I was impressed with was the fact that almost all the instructors at these studios were Brazilians, and not Indians.

As I visited a number of schools across the city for a feature story, a fascinating picture emerged. A large number of people from Brazil, especially from Sao Paulo, go to India every year to learn yoga in various ashrams (retreat centres) and institutions. Spending months in India, especially in Rishikesh on the banks of Ganges in north India, they learn the philosophy and postures from yoga gurus, earn their certificates and diplomas and then return to Brazil to teach authentic yoga.

For someone like me who struggles even to sit in the Lotus Position (legs crossed) on the floor for more than 10 minutes, I was really impressed with yoga teachers and their students practicing various complicated asanas (postures) with ease.

Watching these practitioners holding their breath, murmuring the mantras, doing meditation and performing very strenuous postures, I realized how seriously they take it. Yoga, many of them told me, had made a huge difference to their lives as they achieved a perfect "mind-body equilibrium". There is no better way to describe this ancient Indian art or technique or way of life.

Yoga in São Paulo is not restricted to trendy studios. During the course of my research for the article, I discovered how so many people - men and women of various age groups - did yoga at home. Some of them have been to India. Some have learned from do-it-yourself DVDs. Some have been taught by friends and family members.

As I looked at it from the point of view of an Indian who had learned yoga for five years in school (it's a mandatory subject in all Indian schools), I wondered why in a culture so remote and far from my country this ancient Indian art had become so popular. Also, I wondered why Indian food and films have failed to click with the Brazilians who seem to be in love with yoga and meditation.

I guess I got a partial answer to my question when I got to participate in a yoga retreat at a pousada in the mountains a few hours of drive from São Paulo. At the retreat, the participants combined the yoga sessions with massages, sauna, surfing, boat rides and hiking. It was a good mix of physical fitness and recreational activities. I guess the Brazilians, being very conscious of their physique and looks, have taken to yoga as fish to water.

But it's not just a fitness regime. It also involves a bit of spiritualism. It also involves a little indulgence in vegetarianism. Actually, it's yoga that has become a window to India. Nowhere in Brazil is this more visible than São Paulo, as it's the biggest and most cosmopolitan of Brazilian cities. Maybe in the hurly-burly of big city life, people need to learn how to take a deep breath.

But it's a fitting tribute to São Paulo, the capital of yoga in South America, that the main official event of the International Day of Yoga will be celebrated here on June 21. On Sunday, as millions of people in more than 251 cities in 191 countries around the world observe the day as a mark of "peace and love", in São Paulo the celebrations will be led by the Indian Ambassador to Brazil, Sunil Kumar Lal, at the Sesc Vila Mariana Gym. The ceremony will begin at 10:30 AM, with rituals, lectures, the launch of a commemorative postal stamp and a yoga session for all guests.

They could not have chosen a better city than São Paulo for commemorating the first ever International Day of Yoga.

Shobhan Saxena is an Indian journalist. Based in São Paulo, he reports on South America for various Indian newspaper and magazines. He is the first ever Indian journalist to live and report from Brazil and South America.