• International Day of Yoga, is celebrated annually on 21 June every year since 2015.
• International day for yoga was declared unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
• It was inscribed in the representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in December 2016.

About YOGA:

• Yoga, a school emphasizing meditation, contemplation and liberation.
• Yoga is an ancient physical, mental and spiritual practice.
• The Yoga philosophical system is closely allied with the Samkhya school, but is more theistic than the Samkhya.
• The foundational text of the Yoga school is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, who is regarded as the founder of the formal Yoga philosophy.

Hindu philosophy distinguishes seven major branches of Yoga:

• Raja Yoga (Classical Yoga), a system of yoga codified by Patañjali and classified as one of the six āstika (“orthodox”) schools of Hindu philosophy.
• Jnana yoga, (buddhi-yoga) centred on the faculty of discernment and ‘virtually identical with the spiritual path of Vedānta’.
• Karma-yoga, in which the world of everyday work becomes the tool by which self is transcended.
• Bhakti-Yoga the path of devoted service to God.
• Tantra-yoga focused on the techniques and psycho-physical teachings contained within a body of texts called tantras.
• Mantra-Yoga, one of the most ancient forms of yoga in which the psycho-acoustical properties of the spoken word are used to concentrate the mind.
• Hatha Yoga, a system of physical purification designed to reintegrate and re-balance the mind and body in preparation for Raja-yoga (first described by Yogi Swatmarama).