Richard Gere, spiritual leaders, industry heads join Modi for UN yoga session

Famed Hollywood actor Richard Gere, Iyengar yoga exponent Deidra Demens, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and prominent American singer Mary Millben were among the eminent personalities who joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a unique yoga session at the UN Headquarters in New York.

Modi, on an official state visit to the US at the invitation of President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, led a yoga session in New York to celebrate the 9th International Day of Yoga.

Earlier, in a video message, Modi had said that 180 countries had responded to India's call for celebrating the International Day of Yoga every year.

"When the proposal for Yoga Day came to the United Nations General Assembly in 2014, it was supported by a record number of countries," the prime minister said.

Among the prominent personalities who joined Modi for a yoga session at the UN headquarters were Csaba Korosi, a Hungarian diplomat currently serving as the President of the 77th UN General Assembly, and Amina J Mohammed, deputy Secretary General of the UN and Chair of the UN Sustainable Development Group.

Actor Gere, who attended the event, is also an advocate for human rights in Tibet and a co-founder of the Tibet House, US, and chairman of the board of directors for the International Campaign for Tibet.

Also performing breathing exercises at the event were Vala Afshar, chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce; Jay Shetty, award-winning storyteller, podcaster, and former monk; Vikas Khanna, Indian chef and restaurateur; Mike Hayes, chief operating officer of VM Ware, a cloud computing major; and Britt Kelly Slabinski, a highly decorated US Navy SEAL officer who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq and is a currently a consultant at LeadWright Enterprise.

Francisco D'Souza, founder & CEO, Recognize, a private equity; celebrated yoga instructors Colleen Saidman Yee, Rodney Yee, Deidra Demens, and Victoria Gibbs were also present on the lawns of the UN headquarters.

Christopher Tompkins, a scholar of South and Southeast Asian Studies at Berkeley University, California; Jahnavi Harrison, a British musician known for her mantra meditation music (kirtan); Kenneth Lee, community health chaplain at University Hospital, Newark; Travis Mills, a war veteran who lost all four limbs in Afghanistan and promotes yoga, meditation also performed yoga with Modi.

Also present at the UN headquarters were Jeffrey D Long, professor of religion and Asian studies at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania; Seema Mody, a global markets reporter for CNBC; Zain Asher, prime time news anchor at CNN; Ricky Kej, three-times Grammy Award-winning music composer and environmentalist and American singers Falguni Shah and Millben also attended the yoga session.