The massive celebration in India for International Yoga Day

From the perpetual ice of the Siachen Glacier, the world's highest battlefield, to the balmy southern coast of Visakhapatnam, India went all out on Saturday for a massive choreography to celebrate International Yoga Day, its most successful cultural export and most effective tool of soft power on the global stage.

Since Modi came to power in 2014, when India pushed through the UN resolution that is now supported by 177 nations, yoga has become a pillar of contemporary Indian identity.

The day was marked by demonstrations of massive participation. In the western state of Gujarat, 2,121 people broke a Guinness World Record by holding the "cobra pose" for more than two minutes, as certified by an official judge to the media.

Nationwide, this Saturday's special session brought together, according to government figures, more than 100 million participants, including events led by ministers, Bollywood celebrities, schools, yogis, and the mobilization of the Armed Forces.

The roots of yoga in India date back more than 5,000 years, with mentions in the sacred texts of the Vedas. It was the sage Patanjali who, around 400 AD, systematized this discipline in the "Yoga Sutras," a fundamental text that defines yoga as an eight-step path to calming the mind and achieving a state of union between body, mind, and spirit.