Delhi govt to offer free online yoga classes to Covid patients in home isolation

Registration links will be sent to Covid-19 patients in the Capital, where they can register for the classes and book their preferred time slots

The Delhi government will offer free online yoga classes to Covid-19 patients in home isolation, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announced on Tuesday. Registrations for the purpose began on Tuesday and classes will start on Wednesday, he said.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal addresses a press conference. (ANI)

“In the first such initiative, we have decided to start special yoga classes for all Covid-19 patients who are getting treated in Delhi under our home isolation programme. They will be able to learn yoga and pranayama from our instructors...through one-to-one online classes. For this, a big team of instructors has been created who have been specially trained to teach Covid related asanas and pranayama to the patients,” Kejriwal said.

Registration links will be sent to Covid-19 patients, where they can register for the classes and book their preferred time slots. Each yoga class will be an hour long. The patients can pick slots between 6am and 11am or 4pm and 7pm.

“Our team of instructors has the capacity to impart yoga classes to 40,000 patients simultaneously at present. Each class will have only 15 patients so that the instructor is able to give attention to every person and talk on a one-on-one basis. We also had the option to offer video classes where one instructor is teaching about 10,000 patients. We decided against that because that does not ensure personal attention to the patients,” Kejriwal said.

“Yoga and pranayama improve immunity. They also help to uplift the mental and emotional state of a person. I hope this helps people and keeps everybody in Delhi healthy,” Kejriwal said.

On December 13, Kejriwal announced the “Dilli Ki Yogshala” programme under which the government will offer free yoga classes to people within their housing societies, colony parks or even community centres. The programme was to start from this month. But due to the surge in Covid-19 cases and the restrictions in place, the plan was deferred.

“We had a team of at least 400 certified yoga instructors ready for this programme. Their classes were to start from this month, but due to the new Covid wave, the programme was deferred. So, the chief minister held a meeting to discuss how these instructors could help in the ongoing Covid-19 management and that is when this idea came up. The chief minister immediately gave a go-ahead for the same,” said a government official, who did not want to be named.

The programme was approved in February. For the trainers, the government has roped in the Delhi Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research University and its own training and technical education team. The Centre for Meditation and Yoga Sciences (CMYS) was established in collaboration with the university. CMYS launched diploma and certificate courses and enrolled 650 plus students. These students were then trained and certified to be yoga instructors, and will now teach yoga to people of Delhi, a second official said.