Indian toughest woman are given yoga and meditation lessons

United nations first peacekeeping group all woman125 member team fromIndia are being trained to help strife-torn Liberia, a west African nation rebuilding after nearly a quarter-century of conflict.

"The situation in Liberia is extremely volatile, but we believe our experience in handling difficult situations in India will come in handy," said Seema Dhundia, the 39-year-old unit commandant, .

India has been a major contributor to U.N. peacekeeping missions for decades, and has sent women as part of earlier contingents. But Indian officials felt it was time for a woman-only unit, picking candidates from the country's paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force. The unit expects to deploy to Liberia by mid-October.

125 member team are now in an intensive six-week training program, working under veterans of earlier peacekeeping operations. "Given the situation on the ground in Liberia, our training includes civil disorder management, handling crowds, the levels of force to be employed and use of non-lethal and lethal weapons," said Poonam Gupta, a 10-year veteran of the Central Reserve Police Force.

They are also being given lessons in yoga and meditation to deal with theStress they will face, said Dhundia.

Yoga at IIT (India)after suicides

Some of the students at IIT kanpur having difficult time in sleeping. Many students, suffering from nervous tension and depression due to a phobia over water and study load, says Dr Ravindra Podwal, a yoga expert in charge of the centre.

The IIT decided to introduce yoga and naturopathy after several suicides on the campus. “We are asking students to go to the yoga centre because stress is a silent killer,” says director S.G. Dhande. “And initial responses from students have been positive.”

On May 3 this year, a 23-year-old student, Shailesh Sharma, hanged himself in his hostel room. The institute’s authorities had claimed the final-year student of the chemical engineering department may have killed himself after coming to know that he had failed in two courses — advanced thermodynamics and advanced fluid-mechanics.

In October, Swapnil Chandrakant Dharaskar, a second-year mechanical engineering student, committed suicide.

Now, with the authorities making yoga exercises compulsory for new entrants, about 70 students have joined the centre so far. Every day, after classes are over, they practise yoga for at least an hour.

Sources in the institute’s health unit say a study on IIT Kanpur students in the wake of the suicides revealed that a very high percentage suffered from stress and nervous tension. Podwal agrees. “We had organised occasional health camps and found that stress was a common malady.”

six week Kripalu Yoga course

A six-week program in Kripoalu Yoga is for beginners and continuing students. It will be offered Tuesdays from 5:45 to 7 p.m. at the Woodland Senior Center, 630 Lincoln Ave.

The program introduces and develops basic Yoga breathing (pranayama) and postures (asanas). Kripalu Yoga focuses on compassionately honoring your body's ability, while understanding the details of posture alignment with breath consciousness.