In a review meeting, held at New Delhi, between the Ministry of Ayush and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), the focus was on streamlining and intensifying the joint efforts to encourage Yoga in different countries around the world. The review was held jointly by Vaidya Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, Ministry of Ayush, and Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, President, ICCR. A mutual decision was taken to utilize the certification framework of the Yoga Certification Board (YCB) as a key to promote authentic Yoga across the world.

The Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga (MDNIY) and Yoga Certification Board (YCB), two institutions under the supervision of the Ministry of Ayush in the discipline of Yoga, have developed separate partnerships with ICCR to spread Yoga across the globe. The YCB became a partner with ICCR by accrediting it as a Personnel Certification Body (PrCB) of YCB. The ICCR is actively working on formulating and implementing policies and programmes based on India’s cultural relations. It has got a natural partner in the form of YCB. The MoU signed by ICCR with MDNIY aims at scaling up Yoga training around the world.

As a part of the collaboration of YCB and ICCR, the services of Indian Missions abroad would be utilized to provide certification Yoga professionals as per the approved categories of PrCBs, Yoga Centers and Institutions mentioned in YCB guidelines. The Missions abroad would help to promote the information regarding the activities of YCB for the standardization of Yoga in the respective country.

Further, through the partnership with MDNIY, the ICCR will sensitize Yoga Institutes and Centers and  Yoga Professionals, in foreign countries about the necessity to follow the best practices in Yoga. ICCR will also accredit Yoga Institution and Centers abroad.

It was remarked in the review meeting that demand for genuine training inputs in Yoga is increasing around the world. This has moved to commercial exploitation of Yoga and the rise of many training institutions whose quality is suspicious. Many of them hire trainers without qualifications and provide Yoga courses that are substandard and not reliable. Yoga Certification Board handles this issue through standardization of teaching and training of the reliable Indian tradition of Yoga via collaboration with institutions, accreditation of institutions as well as certification of Yoga professionals. This leads to considerable contributions to healthy societies as well as healthy nations. The broad international network as ICCR will be utilised in the promotion of certification in Yoga in different countries which will offer assurance to prospective learners that the training provided by institutions is authentic and of standard quality.

The other points of discussion in the review meeting were the possibility of certification of Yoga by YCB developing remote assessment kiosks which could be deployed in different countries to enable YCB certification remotely. The need for YCB to certify reliable Yoga textbooks and the possibility of collaboration for promoting Ayurveda worldwide. It was decided to work for these objectives in a time-bound manner.

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