BENGALURU: Youssef Majeed practises and teaches yoga, ideally the most peaceful of pursuits. But, he does so in Lebanon and Syria and even when a war is tearing the two countries apart.
He started studying yoga in 2000. Youssef himself is a war survivor and lost mobility in his lower limbs, after he was shot at in Lebanon.
“I know war,” he says, “I grew up around it.” So, he says, he knows no fear while travelling with the Art of Living classes through these conflict-ridden regions. Youssef’s next plan is to start an AoL institute in Damascus, a place from where videos and images of executions by the Islamic State or ISIS are being sent out.
Conflict does not turn people away from calming philosophies, according to him. “People are willing to learn and their first questions are if it will help us relax,” he says, “even many highly educated people are eager students.”
“I have met people with extremist inclinations,” he says, “but I talk to them. They are curious but once they know that I am not here to change anything or anyone, they are fine with me. Some have asked me if I pray five times a day.” But if they question his faith based on his yogic practice, he says that even the “Prophet meditated”.
But is not just Muslims who are resistant to yoga, believing it to be an extension of a religion, even Christian ask him the same questions. “They ask about the religion and I explain the philosophy,” he says.
Youssef worked for a while in the infamous Rhoumieh Prison in Lebanon. Here he met fears but those that the prisoners themselves carried. “Some were scared to close their eyes,” he says, “because of what they will confront then. The fear was inside... Others were scared of showing any emotions or letting out tears. Tears or emotions are seen as signs of a weakness. If there were tears, they did not want others to see it.” One prisoner told him that he didn’t feel free outside and felt so inside, now that he has tried yoga. Another druggie told him that he gets a high without drugs and side-effects, and “only with breathing,” Youssef laughs.
The yoga teacher was offered security but he refused it after the first few sessions. “The prisoners would only approach me with questions,” he says. When he walked into the prison and offered to conduct the AoL course for the inmates, the prison guard’s head was curious. “He wanted to make sure that I was not carrying anything for the prisoners,” says Youssef, “but he understood after a while. I even offered to take classes for the guards... they are under stress too.” The AoL plans to go back to the prison with a plan for them.
“I was happy teaching the prisoners but there were change of rules and they didn’t allow anyone to interact with the prisoners for a few years, that is how my classes stopped,” he says.
He has been teaching in Syria since 2012, a year after the country erupted in a civil war that claimed more than 2 lakh lives in bombings and shootings. “Our first course was done with 20 people,” he says. Since then, he has trained more than 200 people in Syria and says all the sessions end “joyfully”. In 2016, ten days after he returned to Lebanon from a workshop in north Syria, bombings claimed nearly 300 lives in the very neighbourhood he was in. “Hospitals, parking lots, roads... all were lost,” he says, but he will keep going back.