New Delhi

In 2004, at the peak of turmoil in Kashmir, when Shabbir Ahmad Dar was struggling to introduce Yoga, the ancient Indian wellness regimen, to people and finding no takers because of religious bias, he received a call from a senior bureaucrat who needed help for his son.

The ‘son’ was on the path of drugs and no longer the bright student that he used to be in his school. The bureaucrat found Shabbir’s details from social media and told him to help his son with Yoga.

Shabbir, 40, a resident of Padshahi Bagh, Srinagar, was working as a Yoga coach for the J&K Sports Council. However, knowing the potential of Yoga as a therapy, he launched his NGO Yoga Society of Kashmir (YSK).

He initiated the ‘boy’ into yoga and meditation and gradually weaned him away from the drugs. The boy later participated in the national level Yoga competition.

Shabbir Ahmad Dar receiving prize from Governor  N N Vohra

Shabbir, who has been working to popularize Yoga in the largely Muslim-populated Kashmir for 20 years, wanted to be an athlete. He reached the state level when fate intervened and left him with a permanent injury and cut short his sports career.

In 1997, Shabbir took to yoga and years later not only helped himself get out of the trauma and make a new career but also became a Yoga instructor.

There was no looking back for this qualified Yoga coach as he positioned Yoga as a wellness and therapeutic regimen and in Kashmir where drug addiction and depression were growing, people lapped it up.

“I used Yoga as a therapy to get so many young people out of depression, acute anxiety, and above all drugs,’ he said.

He says once there was a wrong conception about Yoga being a part of Hinduism.

“I would see so many people struggling with health and mental issues due to the situation in Kashmir and wanted to help them; so I offered to help them.”

The acceptance of Yoga as a way of life started increasing with people benefitting from it and also realizing that it’s not going to interfere with their religious beliefs.

Participants an international Yoga competition organised in Srinagar

He made history when he led a contingent of the University of Kashmir in the All India inter-Univesity Yoga competition at Mohan Lal Sukhadia University, Udaipur, Rajasthan, and introduced Kalma recitation in the Surya Namaskar.

Dar, who has been associated first as a student and now as a coach with the Yoga practices for the past about 25 years, said “Many people come to us with physical ailments and return with a good message after getting Yoga therapy.”He has been working in the Sports Council as an Instructor since 2010 and has been elevated to the position of Yoga Coach in Kashmir.

“There was a need to involve Yoga trained youth in further development of the activity in the valley”, he said and added that an NGO, Yoga Society of Kashmir (YSK) was established in 2012.

Yoga training is being given across all the 10 districts of Kashmir Valley.

Shabir says many of his students have received good jobs and assignments in Yoga teaching and it’s becoming a source of livelihood for many young Muslim men and women. “At least 50 young men trained by me have got jobs,” he says.

Young Kashmiri girls practising Yoga in a park in Srinagar

Though today hundreds of Yoga enthusiasts are performing in Srinagar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and at district headquarters, Shabbir remembers a harsh time when he had to shift a competition to Jammu after receiving threats.

He is happy that students coached by him are today Yoga instructors in Saudi Arabia.

Shabbir is coaching yoga to 250 children in Srinagar and 250 in Jammu.

Zarfa Fayaz, who has been learning yoga from Shabbir for six years, says “it has increased my endurance and made me peaceful.”

Young boys practising yoga in Srinagar

Today. A separate lounge is allocated in Srinagar’s Ghulam Mohammad Bakshi Stadium, Srinagar, and Maulana Azad Stadium, Jammu for the practice of Yoga.

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Yoga is being practiced even in the peak of winter in Kashmir. Shabbir said that it can be done well even at a temperature of ten degrees. There is no better mantra than this to keep the body fit. However, he cautions people from learning yoga from social media as it could harm them.