Namaste!

Yoga is in the news this week!  Most of you have seen that amazing picture of our prime minister doing the peacock pose (in 2013) -- can anyone imagine Stephen Harper doing that?  or David Cameron?  or DONALD TRUMP?  (I think I can imagine Obama doing it.)  The best thing about seeing the photo of Justin Trudeau doing yoga was that they aren't sure where he learned his yoga -- his wife is a certified yoga instructor, but his father (the super cool Pierre Trudeau -- who might have been even cooler than his son!) was also a yoga practitioner and there was a photo of him doing the same pose outdoors, taken a year before Justin Trudeau was born.  I remember the days of Trudeaumania -- people actually screaming for Pierre Trudeau and running after his car (just like they did for the Beatles).  He wasn't as handsome as his son, but he was very intellectual and sophisticated and I remember everyone saying that Canada was cool to have a prime minister who was so cosmopolitan and cultured and intelligent.

Then I also read that in Georgia, they have forbidden kids to say "namaste" after they do yoga.  Some parents felt that it was promoting Hinduism.  My understanding is that yoga is not a religious practice and that "namaste" is simply a salutation indicating respect, but I would be happy if any of you could enlighten me if I'm wrong.   In reading about Georgia, I also saw (in The Guardian), that they executed a man who had been on death row since 1994.  The man had been 19 when he murdered a companion over a set of car keys in a drunken and drug-fuelled rage.  He had grown up under horrific circumstances with a drug addicted mother whose boyfriends had beaten him, he'd been homeless and hungry.  I know it is terrible to have killed someone, but when a child grows up and feels like no one cares about him and that the world is a cruel and hopeless place, what do we expect will happen to him when he becomes a man?  I wish that no child would have to go hungry and homeless.