Many changes are being seen these days in a conservative country like Saudi Arabia. In a country where women’s rights were suppressed. Today in the same country women are being treated at par with men. After nearly 20 years of fighting, Nauf Marwai has been declared Saudi Arabia’s first Certified Yoga Instructor. Praising his efforts and struggle, President Ram Nath Kovind Saudi honored Marwai with Padma Shri for popularizing yoga in Arabia.
Nauf had to face many difficulties in these 20 years. Not only ‘Yogacharini’ Nauf Marwai was involved in this mission, but his entire family was there. Nauf’s father, athlete Mohammad Marwai, brought martial arts to Saudi Arabia 45 years ago. Due to which he had to face a lot of opposition from the extremist forces. Praising his efforts and struggle, President Ram Nath Kovind Saudi honored Marwai with Padma Shri for popularizing yoga in Arabia.
She was the only yoga teacher in Saudi two decades ago. He spoke publicly about yoga in 2004. During this time he trained thousands of people and many yoga teachers, who are now teaching in many cities of Saudi and other Arab countries. Nauf tells that no one was aware of yoga here. People here heard about yoga for the first time. Yoga was an unknown subject for him. According to Nauf, he approached for legalization of yoga in 2006 but nothing came of it. Changes in this regard began to appear in 2015, when there was a conflict with some extremists over women’s sports and yoga.
Nauf said that after the efforts of the Prime Minister of India on June 21, when the United Nations declared it as Yoga Day, on that day we officially celebrated the first public yoga festival in Jeddah. After that every year we got a chance to promote yoga. He said the situation had improved when in February 2017 Princess Reema met with Bant Bandar Al Saud, deputy president of Saudi Arabia’s Sports Authority for Planning and Development. Nauf told that he has an important role in the government. In June 2017, the General Sports Authority of Saudi Arabia supported us for the Yoga Day celebrations. However, in the meantime the General Sports Authority was surprised to see the number of people coming there.